What I've Learned About Grief

I wanted to share with you some of what I have learned through my recent loss of three siblings within a period of less than two years. It is my hope that somewhere in these observations, you may find a bit of comfort. 

Grief is a normal human emotion. It is as basic to us as love, and it has been said that the depth of our grief is equal to the depth of our joy. I have found that it underlies everything I think and do for a while. I try to lean into it and allow it to be with me while I move through my daily activities. I also give myself permission to not be as productive as I normally would be. Some days to not be productive at all. Cry when you need to cry. Reflect when insights strike you. 

Appreciate and find beauty, even if it is to touch a leaf. If you can get out into nature, it is so helpful, especially where there is moving water. Surround yourself with color that you love. Make a little shrine to the person that reminds you of the joy in your relationship. Let it shift and change as the weeks go by and be ok with putting those things away eventually. That will mean that their comfort is internal rather than external. Be exquisitely aware of the simple fact that you are here, experiencing the full range of human emotions. Allow the joy in your heart when you see something wondrous to coexist with the grief. It is not a betrayal.

I am an introvert, and am more comfortable avoiding social situations where I feel I have to either pretend things are ok or explain why they are not. Especially when it's raw, I tend to go where I can be anonymous or with only my closest friends. Be aware of your social comfort zone, and honor it as you are working through the grief. Spend time with people who love you and understand and support you.

Allow the loss to put things into perspective in your own life. It helps us realize how much time we waste on trivial matters and petty differences. 

In grief we intensely consider all of the lost persons qualities. We don't want the world to lose those qualities we admire so we try to hold onto them through integrating them and making them our own. We will not be the same. It makes us more fully human, and better humans for emulating them. 

Tell their stories. They have touched many lives in many ways. Let younger generations and loved ones know them through your eyes.

It is crucial to healing to forgive ourselves for the thoughts, words and deeds that we regret. Without that forgiveness, their memory will hold extraordinary pain. It honors them to forgive them and ourselves so that the warm memories and qualities you admire become the prevailing emotions you feel when you think of them. It allows their essence to be the part you carry with you, along with the sadness for missing them. 

If you are responsible for dispersing the belongings of your loved one, hang onto only what serves you, honors them and brings you comfort. Release monuments to pain. Getting rid of their stuff is not abandonment of the person, even if it is an object they loved. Do what you reasonably can to find good homes for things and let the rest go.

Be gentle and patient with yourself and don't expect to be able to shake it off.  Grief will take its own time. It will eventually be less painful. One day you will realize that for a few moments you "forgot" to be sad. Those times will become more frequent, and they will last longer. Your memories will become more bitter-sweet with time. You will never stop missing them, but there is something exquisite about loving so deeply, in realizing how important that person was to you, and experiencing the full range of human emotion.   

The Ripple Effect

We grieve together in the wake of the attacks on Paris. We grieve for the victims, but we also grieve for our loss of innocence. For our loss of trust. We are reminded that this kind of violence is happening all over the world and that all of these lives matter equally. We react even more strongly because it happened in "our world". The world where we can easily relate, where we frequently visit, where this kind of tragedy is a surprise. It was an attack on the culture of Paris, a culture we admire and many of us emulate. Somehow it feels close to home. Naturally, we want to "do" something.  

How we react is governed by our conditioning and our personalities. How we respond is a choice. I believe that violence begets only more violence, and that the calls for peace and love and compassion even for those who carried out those heinous attacks have some impact on the future. That what we can collectively "do" about it is to comfort one another in our grief, and to show kindness and generosity to those people displaced by recent horrifying events. To show compassion to one another as we grapple with the emotions such an event evokes, even if we disagree with their conclusions.

We must use the experience to be more mindful of where best to direct our own power. For some, that will inspire a great change and focus of attention, and I applaud those who feel so called to action. However, each of us has our part to play.

What we can do individually is to be more fully open to opportunities now and in the future to make a positive difference in the lives of others. We can educate ourselves more thoroughly about the causes of this great discrepancy in thought and beliefs, but we may never understand it. We can raise our children with greater tolerance and less prejudice than we have. We can be more attentive to the qualities of our potential leaders and place our votes with those who most closely reflect our own conscience. 

The greatest power I have is to make a difference to those I have access to. I can use that power by continuing to appreciate beauty and connection and to share that perception with others. I can teach with my words and my actions. I can comfort with my thoughts and compassion.

I know that what I can do is a drop in the bucket in the overall scheme of things, but I have seen and experienced the ripple effect and know that millions of drops in that bucket by millions of people, day in and day out, creates the wave that keeps the balance between peace and destruction. That wave reaches "my world", "your world" "their world" and all the world. It all matters, and it is all too close to home. 

Ode to Priska

Priska Hoeger-Rogers
June 13, 1918 -- July 13, 2009


Priska had all the time in the world. She had time to raise four children, and to watch them become loving, productive adults and raise families of their own. She even got to see some of them as they are raising their own families, and took great joy in knowing that more are on the way. Her constant love and support have been a source of strength and has bound us to one another.

Priska walked this earth with an open mind. Though she had her own beliefs, she understood and honored the beliefs of others, and respected their choices. There are so many lessons she taught us, and those she knew we had to find out for ourselves. She was always ready to help, but had the wisdom to let us make our own way.

Priska had time for her friends. A cup of coffee, some apple cake and a little chat to brighten the afternoon. On her daily walks, she always had a few minutes to stop and talk with those she met along her way. Step by step, smile by smile, she endeared herself to those who were lucky enough to have been on her path.

Priska had time to visit her family in Germany, strengthening the family ties across the continents. She had time to really enjoy her grandchildren. To read and play and swing and laugh and play Bumpa Rider and to just cuddle for a little bit. She was never afraid to look a little silly, as she wore a crown of balloons or danced a little chicken polka on a Sunday afternoon.

Priska had time to nourish a garden and to crochet beautiful blankets stitch by stitch, until her hands would no longer cooperate. She loved flowers and nature and she knew that while things can make you more comfortable, what makes life worth living--the fabric of your life is woven of the love of your family and friends, meeting the challenges of life with strength and humor, enjoying all of the little blessings, and in how you spend your time. Priska had all the time in the world, and I'm so grateful that she spent it loving all of us.

Improvisation

We have a saying around our house that there is no situation, no matter how dire, that cannot be improved if it comes with a free taco.

Stuff happens. When I got the message from Pascal that the workshop we had planned would have to be postponed (through no fault of his own) my heart sunk. Two of his eager students were sitting at the table across from me, and I knew that others had driven or flown in that day from far afield, and were settling in for the week at local lodgings, filled with anticipation for the opportunity to study with one of the best regarded muralists in our field.

We met at class time the following morning to discuss our options, and decided that since we had a well stocked studio, a beautiful day, a lot of food, and time set aside, we should take the opportunity to explore some of the techniques that I have come up with in my 20+ years of painting, and possibly share tips and tricks with one another--a paint jam of sorts. Still getting over our initial disappointment, we started going through boards when the whole group was drawn to a sample--Can we do that one? Yes, yes I think we can. And a demo on this? Yes, that should be fine. And this one other technique? Ok, we'll start here and see how it goes. No whining. Resignation turned to curiosity, interest peaked. This may not be so bad, even if it's not what we came for. Eerily, there were primed and even pre-textured materials just sitting around the studio that were perfectly suited for the tasks at hand, in quantities just sufficient to the number of students attending.

And so it went. We were all sorry that Pascal couldn't make it, and our hearts went out to him because he didn't have the benefit of the wonderful time we had once we got over the disappointment of his impending absence. This amazing group of people came and learned, laughed and generously shared their insights and their knowledge and created a synergy that was a gift to all participants. With it came an unexpected bond, touching every heart in what might easily have gone awry had the participants not had the openness to let things unfold into the painting-eating-wine drinking-birthday party-music making conversation fest that emerged.

It came with a free taco.

Chat to Pick Ratio

New Year's Eve brought us a gathering of many of our best friends in the world who are also some of the best musicians we know. It used to be that we would get together with other musicians frequently and play until our fingers fell off and our heads were nodding. We would visit in between songs and when we took a break to eat, but then back to the reason we came together-great pickin'. The raw enthusiasm and intensity of those times were wonderful, but have now given way to a greater interest in the purely social aspect, to the point where our chat-to-pick ratio is sometimes 100-0%.

That's a little embarrassing, somehow. But I don't think it's really from a lack of energy, but rather a shift of focus. We know more of each other now--the selves outside the music. The selves that drove us to play and to write and to travel and share that and other parts of ourselves with other people around the world and at home. And the more we know, the more we want to know of these amazing people we call our friends. And the opportunity for them to get to know one another was too great to spend on making music.

I'm grateful to have them for any day, doing anything, but next time, we really should pick!

Harmony in the Key of Bee

A gorgeous day in Northern California, I was out trimming and raking and hauling pine needles, enjoying the sun and the fall foliage. I like to stand under certain trees in the yard because the bees like them, and I love the sound of their buzzing. They used to scare me, but not anymore. Usually they are many in their numbers between the branches, and so form a sort of eerie chorus. But this morning there was just one... and then another. The first was honey-bee sized with a medium pitch buzz and when joined by a larger variety who's bumble-buzz was lower and deeper, it created an amazing musical harmony. Then one buzzed off and I was left thinking...

I've oft wondered about where our music goes when it leaves us. So many living room and campground jams-- sending our notes into the night. (Even when our songs are morose, the notes we send seem somehow joyful.) I like to think it has an elevating effect on our cosmic collective consciousness--or something greater than we. I know it feeds the souls of the players, the singers and the listeners. It crosses all of the (ab)"normal" human barriers of gender, race, age, economics and social status. Music is the bond, and the average jam is equally likely to have a lawyer, a truck driver, a doctor, a teacher or a hairdresser. We can jam for countless hours with someone we "run into" and never know anything more about them than that they are hot on guitar and know a lot of tunes. We come together, sometimes at complete random. We play, and then we buzz off somewhere, and it leaves me thinking...

So many times every day we come together for a common reason, or some symbiotic relationship like a checker and a customer in a grocery store. We might chat a little, but rarely do we know the stories of the people we run into in our daily routine. Still, we quickly connect with a smile or a glance, using humor and anecdotes even though we may not cross paths again. Living life is the bond, and most of us have more in common than we do not and at least some compassion for our untold stories. I like to think it, too, has an elevating effect on the greater scheme of things. Another kind of music-- harmony in the key of be.

Balance

This is the astounding view out my front door. In surroundings such as these, it is easy to find beauty in nature's abundance. I am grateful to live and work in such an amazing place. Here, it is hard to imagine indifference to our natural environment and to our responsibility to be good shepherds so that future generations of life of all kinds will flourish.

Even still, my recent attendance at the West Coast Green conference heightened my awareness of these world-wide issues and our election of Barack Obama as our future President gives me renewed hope that we will solve those dilemmas that hinder our progress to sustainability.

One huge ecosystem-- a fractal of millions of tiny ecosystems all interrelated. In all of this, we have our own place and we can tip the balance. The way to change things collectively is to change individually and to spread it like a meme. I am trying, but sometimes I forget and I'm lazy and spoiled and I'm going to have to get over it. After all, nothing could be more beautiful than life in perfect balance and harmony with nature.