Am I ever not grieving?

I want my mum. I need my mum.

The grief is omnipresent. It’s everywhere and lives in everything. It’s all knowing, all sensing, all being. I find myself not needing to go searching for it but instead, just place my awareness on it. Its ever-presence. Am I ever not grieving? Am I forever suspended in grief? Good. This feels healthy in ways the West’s obsession with healing teaches us that dwelling in anything dark isn't productive and if we're not being productive we aren’t valuable. My grief isn’t asking me to heal from it. It’s presenting me with a consistent invitation to be in relationship with it. “Put me to use”, it says. My grief doesn’t have a volume because it can’t be heard. It can only be felt and I feel it. It’s in my bones now. My grief strengthens me. I love my grief.

I recently attended a writing circle on grief led by the essential

Fariha Róisín

and this is what came rushing out following a particularly activating prompt she offered the group:

Where is the grief in relation to you? Is it close or is it far? When you look it in the eyes what does it say? Is it howling and loud or is it quiet and silent, tearing you from inside out? Whatever way it feels, acknowledge it and usher it in. It is safe here, now let it speak.

It's been 17 months since my mum passed and I need her so badly right now. She’s the only one I want to talk to. I’m so desperate to speak to her I want to call her phone number even though I know it won’t be her that answers the phone.

Would they have given her number away to someone else by now? Is that how it works?

I think, well actually I know, I've been holding my grief in of late. My husband Tony lost his parents separately but both suddenly, so it hasn’t felt appropriate to keep bringing up mum and how sad I feel. How sad is that? Very. But I reason with myself that at least we got those two years to be together and at least we got to say everything we wanted to say.

I even recorded with her — possibly the most pristine hour of audio I've ever captured and I now realise the entire reason podcasting has been relevant for me. All one hundred honest conversations prepared me for that moment and for that I am grateful. I haven’t listened to it and often wonder if I ever will.

Maybe now is the perfect time. Or maybe now is the worst time. It’s hard to know how much I’ve processed and how much is still yet to come through. As a mother, that’s scary. Betty is so deserving of my emotional stability but she’s also deserving of a mum that models the messy. A mum that explores her full emotional range.

Tony didn’t get a chance to be so thorough and this makes me feel irrationally guilty.

The guilt also travels to Gaza. Lately when I think about how much I miss my mum and how badly I want to talk to her, I also think about the entire family lines that have been erased. I think about the mothers who have had to close zippers on body bags. I have no right grieve. No right.

Of course I do.

During the writing circle I challenged myself to turn my camera on and share a piece with the group — a moment that quickly became loaded with shame. When I speak, who am I silencing?

There’s no truth to my excessive self interrogation, of course. The class was literally about grief and Fariha was the perfect facilitator. Loving. Compassionate. Vulnerable. She did that sweet thing of sharing a personal story of her own after my share. It bolstered mine. Gave it walls. I felt immediate ease.

Before I go, I’d love to share another rush of words that came through following a prompt that called us to declare where our grief was coming from and what it is trying to say to us.

My current grief is coming from every moment my mum and my baby won’t enjoy together. At the seed of my grief is disappointment and a sense of injustice for my mum. It was just about to get good. It was just about to feel easeful. She was finally being taken care of by my sisters and I emotionally and financially and then this chapter – the one she deserved more than most – was taken away. Her last wish for her life was a grandchild and to be able to offer her a short but rich experience of what and who gets to exist because she did is what I cling onto. [Today] Kristin shared the freedom our parents get to experience when they transition and my grief also dwells here. She wanted to go. She was ready to go and that makes me even sadder. That her life didn’t feel worthy of being lived into any longer. Peace only existed for her in death. My grief is trying to tell me – just like she did – to live fully. She told me in her final months: “Don’t do what I did. Don’t stop doing the things you love and need to do to feel like you.” I asked her what she’ll choose when she comes back. She said she'll choose her art. She'll paint, draw and sew some more. She said she’ll live for herself. My grief is trying to give me the advice she always offered when I turned to her: Just see what happens.

Happy New Year. Thank you for reading until the end. You’re officially helping me hold it.

What can I hold for you? Comments are open.

xo