Melody's Musings

The topic of grief has been following me for some time now. This summer, many members of the collective were grieving. I was standing in my garden next to the borage which had overtaken everything else near it, trying to remember my rationale for planting it to begin with. I'll admit I'm more of a chaos gardener- I put seeds in the ground and watch for what grows and what doesn't. I try to nurture things but not everything will grow for me and that's okay. I was looking at all the borage and wondering how I ended up with such an abundance when the messages came in about our friends and acquaintances. I felt inclined to investigate since I feel that everything happens for a reason so I searched my phone and found a video about it. The video explained that Borage is a plant that is connected to the heart, to joy, and to the grieving process.

I got to work- I harvested the leaves to dry into a tea. I collected the delicate blossoms and created a flower essence in the traditional manner. I placed some blossoms and water into a singing bowl tuned to the heart chakra and Zach played it, tuning the water and the blossoms to the chakra. The work felt good. I already had some roller bottles on-hand and some peridot I'd purchased for making vision boards. I added the flower essence and peridot to the bottles and gave them with instructions for use to the people who needed it.

My own relationship with grief is interesting. It's an inescapable hub of the human experience- because where there is love, there is loss and therefore there is grief. I'm aware that it looks different for everyone. I've grieved relationships, phases of life, places I can't go back to, and loved ones and pets along the way- and yet sometimes I struggle both with how to respond to others' grief and with how to handle my own.  I don't think there's a right way to do it (or a wrong one) but I've noticed my emotions in this department do not come readily.  Where some might break into tears readily, I often find that in the moment and particularly in public, I hold back. It wasn't always this way- I was known growing up for wearing my emotions on my sleeve and the ever-readable face. I used to cry about the tiniest thing. I can't remember when it shifted for me but it was some time ago. Things that would have previously broken me have become just another passing day. I don't say that with pride. I say it with a kind of curiosity, the way you might notice a callus on your hand and wonder when you stopped feeling the friction.

Growing up, I was very much kept from death. No one wanted to talk about it. I wasn't allowed to attend any funerals. I'd had little blips of experience with it when, say, a pet bug or fish died. Cherished family dogs passed and their absence was concealed from me- the topic often skirted entirely by a "white lie" like "she ran away". I'm sure the adults around me thought they were doing their best to protect me in the way they knew how. I don't hold that against them. I am, however, raising my son very differently. I've never skirted the topic with him and I've been very factual in my approach because I don't want him to have the same struggles with how to interact with this topic later on in life. I want to support him through navigating these emotions as best as I'm able. I think perhaps I sought out my Death Doula training in part because of both this stigma and in realizing in birth work that these very pivotal transitions are so often locked away in hospitals, behind policies and closed doors- that used to be community events people connected over.

My paternal grandfather passed away this past Sunday. It's fresh and raw and I'm typing this hours before his funeral service. He lived a good life and he was loved by many. While patience wouldn't exactly be on the top list of traits others would list for him, in the reflection from adulthood I've realized he was probably one of the most patient people I have ever met. His appreciation for nature and adventure will live through me. I have regrets about letting stupid family dynamics and distance get in the way of me getting my son to see him more so they could have had more of a relationship. I know even still that he loved my son from a distance.

I'm struggling with the idea of bringing my earseeds and offering them to folks on the way into the funeral. There's no guarantee anyone would take me up on it, but it would feel better to have something I could do to help support those around me. I'm struggling with how to show up, authentically, as myself in that environment because masking feels safer. None of the people in that room even know the current version of me.

When this funeral was scheduled, I had very little time to prepare. I had to contact the secretaries at the other practice I work from and cancel patients in order to be present. I felt guilt taking the time. I questioned whether I needed it at all. I don't like to cancel patients. As a self-employed person, I struggled with the financial decision, offering to stay late on Friday for anyone who still wanted to come this week. There's no bereavement for the self-employed. So the loss comes with... more loss.

There is so much freedom in what I do and yet, the cost of that freedom is that I don't have the same kind of security an employee gets. If I don't work, the bills don't get paid. I often rest around the rhythm of my schedule- slow periods I lean into the rest and busy periods I lean into the work. I love what I do- I get to be present for people in both their best and worst times. My work gives back in ways you can't stuff into your bank account. And yet I still felt like I had to earn the right to mourn.

As I reflect on the topic of grief scheduling, I realize that as much of a fan as I am of compartmentalizing parts of my life from each other in an effort to keep them separate, they can't be. Self bleeds into every aspect of this work because I'm a human working with humans. In part, that's what draws my patients in and keeps them coming back. I refuse to lose my humanity and I always acknowledge theirs.

Yet, my first instinct with my own grief was to try to schedule it- to squirrel it away and keep it contained to its appropriate time slot. I know in an academic sense that it's literally impossible to do and that life doesn't work like that. That life is messy. And yet, when I think back to the version of me that would have broken down right when she found out, the version of me that would not have been okay working all this week- she feels like a stranger. I'm not sure when exactly I became so disconnected from my own emotions that they feel like something I can schedule into a free slot on a Sunday. I'm not sure how it happened either. Maybe that's what grief does. It shows you the distance between who you were and who you've become, and asks you to grieve that too. All I know is that that in and of itself should give me pause. I guess I'll have to schedule that in too.