Tiny bubbles...

On joy and grief intermingled

It's been a hard month. A month of grief - from multiple angles.  People I care profoundly about have or are in the midst of immense loss -- losses I am experiencing my own grief over, but more distantly (or differently) than they are. Out of respect for their journeys, I won't share details here, but they know who they are and how profoundly I love each of them. 

What is surprising me instead is joy.  Somehow, I don't think it's an accident.  That I am finding such joy in this season. Deep, soul filling joy.  Little moments, the smell of salt air, rain on my face, the feeling of Finch's silky coat or Cadey's silly grumbles, time with humans that mean the world to me.

As air is so much more visible when it is pushing up through an ocean of water. So too is joy as it pushes through an ocean of grief and pain. 

These losses and sorrows have left me sobbing until every inch of me hurts. Yet even saying those words feels wrong - because my pain so incomparable to theirs. 

Let me define incomparable - I mean both that pain and grief should never be compared, but also acknowledging that my relative distance from these losses both shields me from the nightmares they are living and inflicts a very distinct kind of grief on me. 

Pain in your village makes you want to do anything and everything to remove it from another.  What would I do to bring their beloveds back? To give them more time or healing or answers or peace that they each so deserve?

I am struck anew by the way that grief is an entirely individual and unique experience but also one that in many ways is one of the most universally common and shared experience. 

One of the most profoundly life-changing books I've ever read was by Jerry Sittser: "A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss". Jerry lost his mother, wife and one of his daughters in the same car accident.  He is one well acquainted with grief. 

Excerpts of his book still ring in my heart often though I've not read it since 2005. One of the most powerful chapters is entitled "Whose Loss is Worse"... and ultimately his words beautifully convey that this very act of comparison we find ourselves in, is in itself a futile act. He lost three women instantly that he loved and who loved him completely until that moment - he asks if his grief is worse than that of his cousin who has had to watch her life slip away slowly and painfully as she battles cancer... or friends that faced the loss of relationships they cherished slowly through abuse or trauma or suddenly obliterated through conflict or betrayal. There is no worse or better kind of loss/grief - just different and also universal.Yesterday, I had some time with my niece Trea, who is hands down one of my very favourite humans on the planet. We got to talking about my dad (her grandfather) though he passed before she was born.

I spoke about his love for me and the thing I miss most about him. While this one thing he did, was not the whole thing, it was the ritual that summed up both who he was and who he was to me. 

Every time he heard my voice on the phone or called me he'd start by saying:

 

Dad & I - 1989
 

"Hey Beautiful!" 

....he was the one person on this earth that I have never questioned those words from. I knew they weren't shallow or conditional or used in any way except utter sincerity and love for me.

I don't know why as women we are such complicated creatures that do not see their own beauty. But he always saw me, at my worst and best as beautiful. Nothing would ever make me any less in his eyes. 

He had high expectations, anyone who ever met him knew that. He was larger than life, he expected excellence from himself more than anyone, but somehow in that pursuit he called everyone around him to the same level. 

I also remember the day I told him I was pregnant with T'ea - while I was thrilled, I was scared to share and expected disappointment. While Brian and I were happily married and wanted kids, it was so much earlier than we had planned. I was still so very young and had big plans for my life, education and career. 

Dad eyes instantly filled with tears and his face broke into a massive grin - he looked like like a cheshire cat. He was overjoyed to become a grandfather and so very happy for me/us. I think back now that somehow he just knew - that I'd be just fine no matter what. His faith in me was unwavering.  The education would happen, the career would happen, most importantly my beautiful T'ea would arrive, followed later by Matthew and they would be the two best things that ever happened to me.  He knew.  

Seeing ourselves the way others see us

Dad saw my beauty even when I didn't. In the last year I've had photos taken of me that I somehow see the beauty in, that he did all along.  As a woman who has always known my worth to both my earthly father and heavenly one, I wonder why it is that I have struggled so much with being able to perceive it. 

It's a weird paradox, I know many will assume this is related to my weight - it wasn't (maybe that's weird) I just saw pictures and they didn't feel like they were of me. There was a disconnect, where I would see them and be like "is that how I look?!" my expressions, features and appearance felt foreign to me. I never hated my body/weight in the way some do. To be clear, I have struggled with it to be sure, but I never felt it made me less than (I know others/culture/etc does but that was not the thing that made my self worth waver in the way I think many people would assume). 

I hated pictures of myself because they didn't capture how I saw myself.  They didn't capture my energy, my heart, my joy, my love for the people around me, my laugh, my silly, my serious, my personality.  The photo of Dad and I above, one of the few I have of the two of us -- I've always loved. I was so comfortable in my skin at that time, with him.  

And then life and trauma and grief and all the things crept in and they changed me. My joy sometimes felt it was underwater, struggling to find the surface. The last few years, there's been so much. Pain, hard things, fear, changes.  

There's something about pain and grief, it has a way of changing you - it can harden you or make you softer. And as pain creeps back into my day to day this fall after a blissful summer of remission/respite. I can't quite explain why - the joy has found it's way to the surface.  

It's made me appreciate my physical body and find myself smiling at photos taken when I least expected:

• on an spontaneous day when I got to experience incredible beauty - sharing a piece of my story with a dear friend, driving her out to the Marin Headlands; 
• sandy, sticky and wearing hats in the back seat of the "Mommy Beep Beep" in the drive thru of an In'n'out burger next to my guy Sam; 
• in a funky light at a martini bar in mexico with beloved friends; 
• and sharing a beautiful moment with Cadey and Finch in the fading light on a quiet Sunday on the lawn at work... 

Each of these photos is intertwined with so much more of my story.  I could write entire posts about each one. 

About not being afraid at 14 because my dad always kept me safe. We'd turned on a dime when the VHS crackled out a Tsunami warning, we had been approaching the Golden Gate bridge when a massive earthquake had hit San Fran. It was an adventure!

...of how you can loose no love or connection with friends trapped by Covid in another country and the babe that was born a week after lockdown could somehow be a boy who loves me so completely even though he's only ever known me on facetime.  

...of all places I'd never thought I'd be - sitting in a martini bar, waited on by sweet gay boys in very tight tshirts and pants who told me how fabulous I looked and a friend that said "that light! let me take your picture" and for reasons unexplained (as a person who hates her pictures) responding "please do"!

...of the hope and joy and confidence and connection that two very different dogs have brought into my life in such different ways - not only because of the perfect love they show me each day but because of the humans they connect me to in such profound ways. 

I used to look at pictures like these and focus on things like why my eyebrows are so bushy on one end and so thin on the other, that my eyes looked closed when I am smiling big, my hair is blown every which way by the wind. And now I just see joy and richness and fullness of life.  

When we are in the dark

This week I shared words ever so hesitantly about "when I was in the dark" with my friend Pip on the heels of their loss. They have done the same with me. And this shared experience connects us to each other. 

Often there is a sense or cultural expectation in our western world that we should not talk about our own grief when others are going through loss (which is not true in many other cultures), but for many - Pip and I among them - co-grieving is how we both receive and express care and love. I am grateful for friends who get this.

Pip wrote this yesterday: 

Grief is pain. It's a pain that feels intolerable yet we have no choice but to tolerate it. Breathe through it. Take care of your animal body. Reach out to your loved ones. Have patience with yourself. The pain gets smaller inside you; you get bigger around it.

Something else I've learned is that in a way grief connects you to other people -- almost everyone has grieved or will grieve. The darkness you're lost in is so, so familiar to almost everyone who has ever lived. The pain that you're feeling is familiar to so, so many people. Countless people. And the darkness is full of love -- that's why it hurts so much.

Breathe through it.

The darkness is full of love. 

On this day

This morning, Sunday, October 30th -- I woke under a tidal wave of grief. Why today, 17 years, 5 months and 6 days since I last held my dad's hand? I have no idea except perhaps the combination of the closeness I've felt to him in recent months and the sharing of beautiful memories with my niece yesterday. 

I don't think grief ever truly leaves us, but as Pip said we get bigger around it. 

The day Dad died, I got a call from my mom that something was wrong, I told her to call an ambulance and I raced towards home. As I entered my guest room my Mom ran to the front door to await the ambulance. 

Dad was lying on the bed, he saw me and his face lit up, to no surprise the words he said were "Hey Beautiful!" followed weakly with "I love you so much". He knew what I didn't in that moment. While I was worried about him, my Dad was invincible, he was going to be fine, he was always fine. What I didn't know at the time was he'd been unresponsive just moments before. My mom was shocked later to hear he'd spoken to me.

Grace gave him strength to rally and us those final minutes together. He crashed in the ambulance, then rallied, then crashed again.  He was gone. 

My rock. My invincible rock. Gone. 

I screamed at God not just that day, but many days.  I pleaded - "this can't be the end" on my knees my head buried in my Dad's chest still warm and safe as it had always been... willing him back to life. In that moment I remember hearing words in my head - "It's not the end, it's just the beginning".  

It's just the beginning

In the years that have followed those words have taken on so many different meanings for me:

• In the early days they gave me peace knowing where he was.
• My mother discovering who she was in a way she never had in her previous 62 years of life - she was now Glenora - no longer the half of "Pete and Gee" she'd so treasured but an extraordinary woman she's always been and will always be in her own right.
• My brother finding peace and hope in his life in spite of his complex relationship with my dad being cut short and feeling unresolved. He has become so much of him, in ways I wonder if he would have without the loss of Dad. 
• Learning that my dad left a void in our family that I had no idea I would somehow, someday step into. 

It was discovering his strength and joy—in spite of every circumstance—actually lives on in me.  Like him, I'm imperfect. But somehow I see his character and love in myself more in these moments of joy, loss, pain and grief. It emerges in ways I didn't think I was capable of.

So today, on a rainy Sunday I am sad and grateful and joyful and missing him.  I also know he is never far.  

The scars we bear

Each scar we bear - visible or not - are proof that we survived.  They are also reminders to find joy. To enjoy each moment. 

To give the hug, to snuggle the pink troublefox, to tell our humans (and dogs) how much we love them, to make the dr appointment, or apology call, to book the flight, to show up. Above all else to be kind and gracious to ourselves as we would be to those we love. 

To let the bubbles of joy rise to the surface and watch them push through that ocean of grief. To cherish them.

Today my bubbles were sitting with memories of some very special people, but particularly my dad:

• His smile both upon hearing T'ea was coming, but also the day he held her for the first time after beating his way into the delivery room. 
• Him teaching Matthew to row a dingy (which meant that the bow of said dingy—as he sat in the back, Matthew in the center—was pointed to the sky).
• Of wearing his sweater (that will forever smell of him because diesel lingers for eternity 🤣) that I wore most nights in my dorm room, finally at grad school (years after his death and nearly 15 years later than expected) knowing how damn proud he'd be of me.  
• Our shared love of dogs - which he always knew would somehow become my career. 
• Looking at the beautiful coffee table my son built over a decade ago, still beautiful and in use, knowing how proud Dad would have been that his craftsmanship and appreciation of practical and beautiful things live on. 

Allowing joy to be present in the midst of grief is part of the beauty of this life.