grief

six from this mornings walk to the little bridge near the salt mine - grey & muddy

[greef]

keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharp sorrow; painful regret.

I've mentioned my Sadness many, many times in the nearly 4 years that I've been keeping this daily blog. Sadness is a part of me, like a birthmark or mole in a hidden place that few ever see.
I'm beginning to believe that what I've always thought was sadness might actually be grief.

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it

Joan Didion

I'm currently reading two books the first a thrilling non-fiction page turner called The Wave: In Pursuit of Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean a book in my I could have been pile - I could have been an oceanographer, I could have been an entomologist, I could have been a marine biologist ... the second book The Year of Magical Thinking I'm reading for the second time. Joan Didion's memoir about her life the year after her husband (partner, companion, glued at the hip, hardly ever separate, both writers, together always and for over 40 years) dropped dead one evening before dinner. A massive heart attack.

What prompted me to order The Year of Magical Thinking from my library so I could read it again was hearing that Joyce Carol Oates has just published a similar memoir A Widow: The Shock of Losing a Spouse She and her husband were also that inseparable pair, for over 47 years. Hospitalized with pneumonia but otherwise healthy he died suddenly from a secondary infection. I am completely compelled by tales of grief, by descriptions and feelings of grief, by trying to understand grief. I've ordered the Joyce Carol Oates book as well, from my library.

Ever has it been known that love knows not it's own depth until the hour of separation

Kahlil Gibran

My father died suddenly of a massive heart attack just weeks after my 16th birthday. At the time he died my parents were separated and he was living with his mother, my grandmother Flo. It was the summer, he was sad, he missed us, he was afraid he would lose our love (my sister and I) and one day July 25th, driving his car to work after lunch he died. Gone. Every thing he was seemed gone in an instant. Within 6 months my mother had remarried, we'd moved to a new house and I was in high school. I suffered panic attacks & anxiety. I began hiding food and binge eating. If I had had access to alcohol or drugs I would've relished in them but I was only 16. I was an addict in the making. My grief, my sadness became my secret friend. Tucked away tightly during the day, well hidden from everyone but at night, safe & snug in the darkness of my bedroom we would visit together. Over all these years ... it's still with me, that grief.

When my dog Jake died, a dog who became over 12 years my joy & comfort, my safety & security, my love. My one big true love. When he died three years ago all of that grief that I'd been carefully saving, carrying around with me hidden, finally unwrapped itself and it all tumbled out. I felt like I would die of sadness, imagined death felt better than that ache. I used to call that thing, that feeling, that constant ache - Sadness, my sadness, like my arm or hair or freckled face, some chronic thing I was afflicted with. I now believe that that thing I call sadness has been and continues to be grief.

I still feel past griefs. I presume, assume & imagine all kinds of future griefs, especially my own. I prepare for grief and I vicariously feel the grief of others. I grieve the parents of an 8 year old Ontario girl recently swept into a swollen icy creek and drowned - how could they possibly survive that pain ? I grieve the coyote who's leg instead of neck was caught in an irresponsible trapper's snare, who suffered days of intolerable cruelty until some kindness with a gun happened upon him. I grieve still for Lee (and his family) our village caretaker who died last week. How he can he be gone and where did he go ? Each morning Winnie and I would say hello to him as he made his way, coffee mug in hand, hand rolled smoke between his lips, to a bench in the park that wraps around our little harbour. His office, that park bench at the water's edge.

There are griefs so loud they could bring down the sky
and there are griefs so still no one knows how deep they lie

May Sarton