The Tension with Grieving
grieving
is redirection of power
to give one’s
impatience a hug
to be powerful
in powerless waiting
grieving
is redefinition of attachment
to let go of letting go
to see oneself attached
to the absence
that does not let go
This excerpt is from Jonathan J. Foster’s book Indigo: The Color of Grief, a heartbreakingly beautiful book that captures Foster’s grief over losing his daughter in a car wreck.
I highlighted this passage and have come back to it multiple times. I wish it didn’t capture grief so accurately, but I think I’ve come back to it so much because it has put much of the tension that grief can cause into words.
The feeling of grief is heavy, weighted, and consuming. It’s a natural tendency to want to get away from that kind of experience. But to get away from this weight is to also get away from the cause of the grief.
A lost loved one, a lost dream, a lost experience.
And it is also natural to never want to fully let go of those people and things that we deeply love. Foster notes this tension beautifully in stating how we hug our impatience. Perhaps the most patient, and least natural response we can give to impatience. Or to feel powerful in the powerless waiting. Again, feeling powerful is an unexpected response to feeling powerless.
We want so desperately to let go and have a different emotional experience, but we so fiercly want to hang on to the people or experience that caused it.
I think before we encounter grief much of life makes more sense to us. Things seem to fit and seemingly flow together. And then once we encounter grief we spend much time trying to make sense of how much of life really doesn’t make sense at all.
The last stanza I captured above took me numerous reads before I grasped what Foster was saying. I think he’s saying that as much as we want to work through grief and move on, perhaps we should strive to welcome grief with a more permanent seat at our table.
Which I agree can initially sound overwhelming. Especially when we think of the grief that takes our breath away, makes our hearts heavy, and rushes tears to our eyes. The grief that is accompanied by sadness and overwhelm. And, yes, that part of grief is rather hard to continue to sit with.
But there is also grief accompanied by connection, gratitude, and joy. The grief that reminds you of the sweet memories and traditions you had with your loved one. The grief that brings back the nostalgia of experiences and people filled with joy, connections, and love.
Yes, the grief that reminds us of absence is heavy and weighted. But that absence is felt because it was once filled with a beautiful soul, with heart-racing dreams, with soul-filled joy. Unfortunately, we have to sit with the pang of absence before we can step into remembering the sweetness of what once filled it.
If grief is something you have encountered, I recommend checking out Foster’s work, as this is only a snippet of what he shares and what resonated with me.
