Mingling Joy and Grief

Thursday, May 1, 2014

As we move closer to the time of the Summer Solstice I can’t help but feel as if I might soon start feeling the strange juxtaposition (I originally called it a polarity) I first experienced last autumn.  Last autumn, as I began to truly and noticeably recover from the deep pain I found myself in last summer, I noticed that my internal progress struck a discordant tone with the world outside my windows.  As I began feeling more and more vibrantly alive the world was moving in the direction of less and less aliveness and energy.  The world was moving towards the silence and dormancy of winter as I was personally experiencing the joy (and growing pains) of renewal we commonly associate with spring.

Well, now it’s Spring (and really and truly it seems the time of snow is now behind us) and the grass has greened up beautifully outside.  But what am I aware of?  I am so intimately aware of the grief I have been carrying.  Grief seems to be a perfect companion of the winter season.  But what about grief in spring and summer?  Yes, it does indeed seem that grief has no one true season but that it is most compatible with winter.  And so as we move towards the climax of the light season of this calendar year I feel a bit of a conflict inside myself:  I want to grieve but I also want to enjoy the outdoors, bask in sunlight and forget about all my cares and concerns…and my grief.  But I have learned something from the thirty-five years or so I carried this unresolved grief around…it won’t subside and heal if I ignore it.  It must be dealt with.

It seems to me perfectly healthy that a person’s grief will show spikes at times of the year that the person deeply associates with the person or aspect of life that was lost.  This has been on my mind today because the month of May has begun.  My father’s birthday is May 6^th.  The last two years have marked a time of personal struggle as I came to clearly see, degree by incrementally greater degree of clarity, that I needed to give up on ever expecting my father to really be present to the full range of my most basic needs.  For whatever reason he is not capable of being available in that way.  And I think it is highly, highly unlikely that he will ever change in a significant way.  So it’s time to let go and free myself by doing so.  Pining away for the fulfillment of basic needs that have never been met will only cause me more pain.  I know this on a rational level.  And yet the process is still painful because making such a difficult decision involves more than the brain.  It also involves the tenderness of the heart.

It was my father’s inability to be present to my grief regarding the decline of my birthmother last summer that finally thrust me into an awareness I could not deny.  My father has serious limitations regarding his emotional health.  As I noted more recently here in my blog it is time for me to stop going to the dry well hoping to find water.  I must find sources elsewhere.  And there are indeed sources elsewhere I can draw upon.

……

It’s a little strange to watch the trees blooming out now.  I remember so many springs throughout my life…but my memory is a bit fuzzy.  I was looking through eyes clouded by the impact of trauma.  Not so this year.  This year I see clearly.  This year my eyes luxuriate on each and every bud I see in a single tree.  This year my eyes are awake like the heart of a lover whose beloved has finally returned home after a long time away.  Yes, my awakening continues.   As winter recedes and the world greens up I feel the bittersweet tenderness of spring mingling with the grief so very present in my awareness.  Even now, ten months after my healing journey began in earnest (yet again), I still find myself adjusting to life without the imprint of trauma.  Some days I feel so happy by the unexpected lifting of that trauma induced veil that distorted my perspective of the world.  Other days my predominant feeling is one of immense sadness.  But the trend of my journey is still upward.  I feel this to be true.

It’s my perception that grief and the American obsession with progress, speed and accumulation of wealth do not mix well.  Consumption and hoarding borne of paranoia require a persistent acquisitiveness that defies the quiet solitude that cloaks the terrain of a world traversed by the visitors of grief’s domain.  To grieve we must slow down.  To grieve we must allow our heart’s need to linger.  To grieve we must actually be aware of what is in our hearts.  And no heart can withstand the subtle squeeze of grief’s insistent grip.   A heart unchanged by the sadness and grief omnipresent in the world is a hard heart indeed.

And yet there is joy.  There is also joy to be found in each and every day.  Joy and grief, seeming polar opposites, need some of the same ingredients.  Joy and grief need quiet, attentiveness, honor and, perhaps most important of all (?), curiosity.  I hope I can cultivate this spirit of curiosity as I finally allow myself to consciously walk the realm of grief.

That which we exile and push away can become our keeper.  What we resist tends to persist.  It’s no wonder so many Americans seem to walk around with a blank look in their eyes.  A harried people do not “do” grief well.  They do lunch better than they do grief.  I suspect paranoid or bitter people don’t particularly grieve well either.  Such people’s attention is too frozen into focusing on what they fear or loathe to embrace the subtle yet exacting demands of grief.  At least these are my speculations.  Time will birth more personal experience by which I can measure my own growing wisdom. 

I pray to allow myself to slow down enough to bear witness to the little boy I was who felt so sad when his mother left his life…and there was nothing I could do to bring her back.

……

I just finished dinner and now I’m on my way ‘home’.  It’s so nice that the days are long enough now that the world is lit up after 6 p.m.  I won’t find myself hankering for the short, dim days of winter any time soon.

Beginning next week I am going to try a different form of therapeutic treatment.  The treatment is known as impasse therapy.  My understanding is that it is designed to foster something of a constructive dialogue between different aspects of ourselves when the existing tension or lack of cooperation causes difficulty in life.

I recognize clearly the ‘part’ of myself that I want and need to work with.  It’s the little boy I was at the time my mother left my life and returned to Germany.  I didn’t properly grieve that loss at the time it happened.  I can’t even really consciously recall it happening.  I was of an age that tends to mark the earliest time a person can expect to lay down memories in the brain which will be accessible later as an adult.   

When I sit quietly and attempt to access this self I was so many years ago I find it challenging.  I honestly cannot consciously recall any memories that have a visual aspect to them.  I can dimly recall the feelings of great sadness and loneliness I apparently felt.  By not learning how to grieve in a healthy way at that time I feel this failure to address my pain in a healthy way laid the foundation for some of my dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors later in life.  I was essentially expected to move on from this tremendous loss without doing the grieving that is healthy, normal and predictable.

There is a lot of grief in me to attend to.  I’m grieving the loss of relationships in my paternal family of origin that can never be the same again after what happened last summer.  I’m grieving the loss of an image I held of who my father is…and was.  I’m grieving the immense amount of time that I saw the world through a set of eyes distorted by the impact of trauma.  And I am also grieving how that distorted vision subtly influenced my sense of self, my self-confidence, my choice of friends, my estimation of my abilities and my career trajectory.  So much of my life has been influenced by these very old issues.  I do not find my paternal family of origin to be sufficiently supportive of my most basic needs.  I therefore have severed all active interaction with them.  Perhaps one day this will change.  But I will not hold out unjustified hope that any real change will happen.   I do not want to delude myself.  I feel as if I have lived in a realm of illusions long enough.

I am considering an idea for a different way to honor the relatives of my paternal family of origin on their birthdays that will allow me to still honor them without making some sort of actual contact.  I might decide to give a small donation to the Basilica of St. Mary in their honor each year at the time of their birthdays.  I can keep a receipt as documentation of the gift in the event that I one day find myself engaging with them again.  I want to keep the positive memories I have of each of them alive in my heart.  Perhaps this is a good way to do this.