Turning Grief into Love

and a poem for you

A female downy I captured @RefineRetreat last year

To listen to me read this post:

I awoke this morning with one thing on my to-do list: Christmas cards. Since we had all our little family together at Thanksgiving, it’s the first time in a long time I’ve been able to make a photo card and I’ve been excited about sharing it with our friends. So what if that softie sweater makes me look a little heavy? So what if the clarity of the image didn’t come out as well as I’d hoped? So what if I couldn’t squeeze all of our names in the text box?

We are all together. Smiling, no less. Even the memory of the work it took to accomplish such a thing makes me happy.

And so, I dusted off the printable document with all the address labels, combing through to see what needed updated or changed. But I wasn’t really prepared, was I? I realized this too late as I touched each name on the list with my eyes, then with my heart, musing them over like prayer beads.

I’ve lost two uncles and an aunt this year—just in the past few months. Friends have gotten divorced, and some have moved far away and others I haven’t heard from in years. There was a lump in my throat as I deleted my own father’s name from the list. My stepmother’s name seemed so lonely above that familiar address.

Another first without him.

Moment’s like these can rob me of my volition. I must stop what I’m doing, breathe deep, let grace settle in my heart. So, I set the cards aside and settled into my morning readings. Then I trudged out into the cold in my housecoat and filled the feeders. I have been out of suet and mealworms for a couple weeks, but I dusted every nook and cranny with black oil sunflower seeds and topped off the thistle feeder. Then I dumped the murky water in the bird bath and scoured it with a scrub brush to get rid of the green creeping around the edges. Instead of using the water hose, I refilled it with hot tap water, hoping my little feathered friends might enjoy a spa treatment. The glass bird bath I carefully placed out front this summer has already succumbed to the cold nights we’ve had—I awakened one morning to find it cracked and leaking. I’m trying to be more cautious with the larger, terra cotta version, filling it only when there is no threat of freeze. I keep meaning to check into some kind of heater for my little setup, but I have yet to follow through. I am watching now as a pair of house finches dip into the clean water.

Being a good caretaker of this little patch of earth takes time and noticing. This time of year, especially, when the trees are disrobed and the hills all skeletal and colorless, I feel the holiness of the earth eek up through the bare landscape. I feel protective of the creatures who are my neighbors, their vulnerabilities prick my heart. Food sources are rarer this time of year, and water supplies are frequently frozen or dwindled. These are small things that I do and I could do a better job of them, but I keep trying.

I was talking with a friend the other night about what a strange thing grief is. “It’s not a ‘one-and-done’ thing, is it?” I said, and she knowingly shook her head. We talked about how emotions can seem to ambush you, out of the blue. But sorrow is making me softer, more tender to the beauty I encounter every day.

I was listening to Krista Tippett’s interview with Nick Cave earlier this week. Nick Cave is a musician who, unthinkably, has lost his two sons to untimely and tragic deaths. He said so many profoundly touching things in that interview, and I found myself listening through tears.

“I think that there was a sort of zeal attached to grief, of seeing the world in a completely different way. I don’t see the world in the same way as I did before. It’s much more complex than I thought and much more fragile. And this creates a different feeling towards people in general. I found, anyway. I hear that a lot, that grief and empathy are very much connected, in the same way as loss and love are very much connected, too. And that the common energy running through life is loss, but you can translate that into love too, quite easily. They’re very, very much connected. And that comes around from an understanding of just how fragile and vulnerable and precarious the nature of life seems to be.” ~Nick Cave

Translating loss into love. That’s what I’m trying to do as I notice this beautiful earth around me. Turns out, it’s not as hard as it sounds.

To close, here is a little poem for you that I wrote last year on my 54^th birthday:

Fifty Four

the young male downy
woodpecker has found
the cache of sunflower seeds
I tucked into the dimple
of our maple tree

from my office
window, I cannot stop
watching him furiously
dine, tapping seed
after seed against
the rough bark

I should be writing,
folding laundry, even,
instead of falling
in love with that red
patch of feathers
on his nape

he scrambles up
and down the tree’s
craggy surface, two
toes forward, two
toes back, see how
he stashes away secret
snacks for later
into the many ruts
and divots of the old
tree’s skin?

the skin, the skin!
cracked and rough
and full of secrets;
how the skin of the tree
loves the little downy;
how it loves the world.

Once again, thanks for reading.