Waking Up With Grief: Not The Way I Would Have Chosen To Begin
scattered thoughts on the fragility of life, different kinds of bucket lists, the lovely ordinaries, and god
Hi friend and thanks for being here! Truly.
Here we are. Number 3. And I am already out of my mind and deep into my heart. I have the urge to say sorry, but let’s make this an unapologetic zone, ok?
first a brief preface
What I am about to share happened while I was working on my first post so I could have led with this story. However, sometimes stories need to marinate within us before they are ready to be full heart told. Sometimes you need to wait because it does not feel like your story to tell yet. Sometimes silence is the most authentic voice for tragedy and pain.
Sometimes you need to wait until you feel like a human ready to heal rather than a mere spectator to the fragility of life.
This is not the way I would have chosen to begin, but it is the direction love is blowing me. It was difficult to organize my thoughts so it might be a bit scattered. Bare with me. It is a full experience. And this is what we are here for.
Here it goes…
A 14 year old boy feels sick, goes to the bathroom, and passes out in the hallway at school. It happens with a light thump. He is found by a classmate. Other classmates quickly gather around him. A teacher tries to resuscitate him. Then another. His mom and dad arrive while the paramedics are trying to pump life into his 77lb body. His mom is told not to touch him. He takes his last breath.
It was 8:30am. A Tuesday. The first week of school. Poof. He was gone.
This is life.
It happens every day. Everywhere. It always seems so surreal though. Something most of us will have difficulty with for a lifetime.
Perhaps this accepting loss stuff is for zen masters and sadhus who have sat for years far away from worldly life.
For the rest of us, it is unbelievable in the I don’t want to believe it sense.
I hate to start out pointing a finger at us, but…
but really, (how) are we still missing the wake up calls?
Everywhere we go signs of how fragile this life is. And us probably looking down at our phones. Completely missing it.
Are we hiding?, I wonder.
Maybe this post was meant to be. What better way to start a space created to speak about loving life than with a huge reminder that we are all going to die and none of us will ever know when.
I know we know. And yet, allow me to repeat this again:
We will never know when. When we say it outloud, it never stops being unbelievable, does it?
No one excluded.
And still, we are all so bad at this stuff. Remembering. Honoring life. Staying awake.
lovely ordinaries
(oh how I love those ordinary days - a journal entry, sept 25th, 2024)
I just finished my practice, rolling up my yoga mat in the same place as yesterday, same exact time. 11am. I look beyond the pool to the space from where I heard the people gathering to hear the news.
Same soothing water is running in the background. Just like yesterday.
Yesterday the air was filled with trauma, tears, and frantic texting. Today, empty space in the direction of my gaze.
Yesterday wind and clouds blowing in. Today stillness and sunshine overhead.
Yesterday, a lovely ordinary Tuesday became ‘a before’. Today is now ‘the day after’.
How simple things change. How things less simple change.
The wake up call: nothing lasts forever.
We continue to take it all in vain. Live believing in infinites; like the opportunities to redeem our thoughts, words, and actions are limitless.
But they aren't.
Life is unexpectedly taken from us all the time. And not only by death.
And people are left behind with so much guilt, regret, if onlys. At least, these are the things we tend to drown in at first.*
*(…but one day the loving memories can be spoken about again, we can mention that living being and smile. And for some of us - the ones who will do the work - one day the love may shine farther than the pain of losing seeps.
And this love pulls us up and reminds us how to swim. This is the moment we are ‘awakening with the grief’.)
(the lasts)
How we show up matters. How we speak. What we do or do not do. Our presence.
If only we could tattoo this on our brain.
There aren't always do-overs.
There isn't always more time for everyone. To say that one thing you meant to say.
How did you treat your husband, mother, son, or neighbors this morning? How would you have treated him/her/them if you knew it would be the last ‘treatment’?
Another family is left without a son. It makes me think about their lasts.
What was the last word spoken? Was it loving? Was it true?
Did he get a hug goodbye as he left the car or was his dad in a rush or maybe texting on his phone?
And now his dad isn't texting anything or posting his beautiful photography or art work. He is feeling. He is rehashing. His mind, a container of whys and hows and it can’t possibly bes.
He is sitting, hunched over, head hanging heavy in trembling hands and wishing it was a horrific dream, that life was not so fragile, or at least, that he had treated life as if it was way before.
This is what we do.
(the befores)
Before is no longer a possibility once it is gone.
And we are left with wanting to turn back time, add something, erase other things, get rid of this feeling.
But all we can do is use it and learn.
But can we? Yes(!!!), if you are human, you can!!!
The question is, will you?!!! Before something else happens.
Or will you keep:
not being fully there,
speaking too much, listening too little,
distracting yourself,
mixing up priorities.
pushing your full capacity to love to the side because you have something more important to do… because it can wait for another day.
And, deep inside holding this knowledge that life is only now.
I know we know. And yet, so often wasted knowledge… what a waste.
(the afters)
Ordinary days are the days we rarely remember, but should. They are ‘the befores’ that we do not appreciate until an atrocious ‘after’ arrives.
FRONT PAGE NEWS
a 14 year old boy died at school yesterday. Today his family is more awake than they have been for a long time as they drift forward in the thick fog of wishing for just another, lovely ordinary day.
Holding space for a moment of reflection. Do you have any thoughts about all of this? Life. Death. Waking up. Please share.
waking up
Two days after he passed away, the boy was dressed in his Communion clothes. It would have been celebrated on October 6th. He was so excited about his new shoes.
He told his mom that they made him look taller. I can picture his mom standing over him, touching those shoes as much as she could for the time that she still had.
And his dad, heavy head in hands. His whole body trembling now as the exhaustion kicks in and as people arrive and then leave.
And me, praying for this father's mind, silently repeating, Be kind.
So many white flowers in one room. And they just kept coming and coming. Each one with a goodbye note.
We will miss you. Rest in the power of the courage you gave. Too young and forever in our hearts.
And I wonder, will this time be enough for us to truly wake up to our life?
And so I pray: May we learn and remember. For if we listen carefully, we will hear this boy’s voice calling out to us, so young, yet so wise: ‘Please, if you love me, wake up.’
I can see the beauty here. Can you?
live as if… or
Live as if it were the last day of your life. We have all heard/spoke/read it. And sure, it is a nice touch on bracelets and mugs and bumperstickers.
But honestly, for most of us human forgetters, this is impossible.
We are bad at this stuff. Or did you already forget?
The alternative: Return to love.
It seems so much more realistic than living as if it were the last day of your life every day…
which for some may be creating wild ‘bucket list’ type items that will never be checked off.
Ditching work to have sex on mountain tops or fulfilling any other crazy dream we can muster up under the spell of our weird ideas of what living life fully actually means.
Attention: Living life fully does not require us to become daredevils or break records.
It seems so logical. Put love into as much humanly stuff as possible on every ordinary day. There is nothing fuller than this.
It is accessible to everyone equally. Absolutely everyone. Unbelievable, huh?
love lists
In To Make A Snow Angel On A Stranger's Grave,
speaks about creating a different kind of bucket list, one that is based on goals for her spirit.Bungee jumping is not involved.
Instead…
To sit with the mourning dove who cries for her lost love.
To mend a friend’s clothes with my grandmother’s thimbles.
To make rose petal tea from the rose bush that always scratches me when I walk by. Read the rest here.
Andrea’s list reminded me of the alternative. It all sounds so much like love.
I am going to create my love list knowing that it will not prevent me from falling back to sleep, but it will help me to do love more often.
The first one borrowed from
:To say goodnight to my mother every night of the year (and to my dad too and not only when there is a hurricane in Florida).
An invitation to pause here and add one item to your love list. Maybe also share. 👇
a less loving thought
Someone dies. All the time. Different age or place or situation.
Surely, much worse situations than this. abandonment, violence, trafficking, war zones, starvation…
True and yet, this sounds so cruel.
Can we assign degrees to death, levels to grief? Is someone else’s death more tragic than a 14 year old boy’s?
A boy who couldn’t run or play for years because he was waiting for a heart transplant, who had been in and out of the hospital for the past 4 years. And then, when his voice was finally changing and he felt big(ger) and happier for this and his mom bought him those new shoes, died during his first week of high school.
I actually thought this for a microsecond, before shooing it away.
I always despised that question: If you had to chose between x and y to get hit by a train who would you choose?
And it came to my mind again when I was reading the extremely touching letter written by With Love, Amal in to the dead palenstinian fetus on my instagram feed.
Just another microsecond - just a (palestinian) fetus - that just, just so horrible and unloving. And so unjust.
shoo, shoo… so not true.
Is it less for an 80 year old grandma, 20 years on chemio? A homeless man? Or the dog of a homeless man? Or your dog? To someone else, maybe just another just.
It is difficult to defend laws of nature and the concept of survival of the fittest when a mom, dad, 2 brothers, and a long trail of other loved ones are left behind with profound depressions in their hearts.
It is difficult to reason this way, even when this life has blessed them in every other way immaginable.
And it is absolutely impossible to think better or worse when it happens to you. Even when we all know that worse most always exists.
a project of God and grace
At the funeral, the boy’s mom, Laura, spoke:
I truly believe that it was a project of God, she said. A gentle, kind God. Yes gentle and kind. We could not know what would have happened. Would my boy finally get a heart and then maybe have complications leaving him to suffer even more? Would a new heart never arrive and lead him to bedrest, maybe forcing him to be in a hospital with tubes tied to him for the rest of his short life.
God knew.
Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world. - Eckhart Tolle
I am not a believer like her. But I know that her strength and faith is a source of extraordinary grace.
They say that with grief, there is no other side to get to. However, I felt Laura guiding the way.
To me she was saying:
Grief. You move through it like ocean waves crashing upon you. And you respond with love, resiliency, and trust.
Grief is not something that comes to an end, but on the other side it is possible to find the grace of acceptance if you do not give up.
Maybe if you sit enough with yourself in silence until you trust deeply in something way bigger than you.
beauty reappears
Speechless days. And so many tears. It seemed as if they were weaving hearts together.
And with this, beauty reappears.
The Universe does not always give us what we want. But it always gives us something that we can use.
It sometimes feels as if this whole life is about dealing with discomfort, difficulty, and loss. And maybe this is the point. This is where life is encouraging us to grow.
Can we grow so much that we begin to see the beauty in these moments?
I do not follow any one religion. I am not the spiritual person who waits. I know what resistance feels like. I fall victim to pushing and distracting and wishing away. But my desire to live well saves me. And I search for ways to be gentle with my life. I try to see with love’s eyes and ask myself, what else can I see and feel?
… and so beauty reappears.
Grief makes you want to isolate, but what you really need is to reach out to people. To compensate for the missing link. Remove a link from a chain and the circle will inevitably becomes tighter.
The boy’s brothers and cousins were seated in the front pew. 7 of them, ages 10 to 20. At one point, they stood up and started hugging one another. All of them, in a tight, little circle, sunlight shining upon them through the stained glass of the church.
And there it was: absolute beauty.
The beauty is there. We are required to hunt for it sometimes. Honestly, often.
It requires us to wake up to our life. Not taking the good stuff for granted. Health. Food. Family. Home. Two legs. Two arms. Two eyes. Two ears. The gift of growing old. A functioning heart. People who bring us white flowers with notes.
…this connection we are cultivating right now as I type and then send these words to you. And my love. All of it. And your love. All of it.
…and with this, beauty reappears.
final goodbyes and faith
I just came back from Saturday mass. It has been weeks since we said our final goodbye to his little body. It was surrounded by letters and stuffed animals and white flowers when they drilled the box shut. I can still hear the sound. Like a bad aftertaste that won’t go away. It sounded raw. Like raw pain.
And I can still see the first scoop of soil being carefully placed in his hole.
As I watched, I thought to myself: How strange. This man (the one on the mini tractor) here every day, filling holes, covering bodies - a constant spectator to the fragility of life. And to the holes left in so many hearts.
Wondering: Is he more awake for this?
Today the priest mentioned his name. He said a special prayer and told us that the boy returned home to God. It still felt too superficial.
If God decides who comes and goes and when, I wonder what the criteria truly is. Are there justs involved?
Maybe I was sinning right there in church. Are you allowed to question? Honestly, I don’t know the etiquette or ethics of this sacred space. Most of the time, I feel myself unvoluntarily shaking my inner head in doubt and even judging. I am so sorry when I do. I know that I need to work on this.
It happened even today.
Then I remembered this project of God Laura spoke of so gracefully and full of faith. I wanted some of what she has.
But then I looked over at her and she was crying under her oversized sunglasses and I felt as if the priest’s words may have been too superficial for her too. Over 14 days without her middle child. She looked a bit more human to me today.
I once heard that people of faith have glasses. Sometimes they are able to wear them and sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they are misplaced or need to be cleaned. They feel stronger when they have them on, when they are spotless. But when they don't, when they are dirty, things are less clear. They doubt the goodness of God, maybe even his existence.
I realized that each of us have things that we reach out towards when we need to believe. For some it is God. For others like me, it is loving energy. And maybe, just maybe they are the same thing. We just call it different things.
We need to believe that there is something safe guiding us generously. That there is a project for all of this. Otherwise, the pain would be too big.
white flowers
We have been visiting Tommy’s grave almost every day. Yes, this is his name. He was my nephew.
The white flowers have died and others put in their place. And even these, already browning. Time passes.
There is nothing like loss to bring you back to life. But again the question is, will we?
… be here before the lasts. Before the goodbyes. Before the white flowers arrive again. Before they brown and die.
Grief may never go away. But you don’t have to wait until you are healed to awaken to life. The awakening is the way to the healing.
note-to-self: add to love list: to never pass a white flower - fresh or withering - without remembering.
Would you like to:
on writing - a final word
Hemingway said, “Write hard and clear about what hurts.”
We share the good to celebrate. We share the challenging to grow.
I wrote this letter to you for the same reason that I write about anything hard. Not to express what I know, but to figure out what I want to know. To make sense of my feelings, maybe heal a bit more. So that I remember to do love. Sharing helps us with all of this. These words are for us. And even if it doesn’t happen today, some day you will remember something you read here, it will hold you closely. What we consume now is not lost. It is tucked away, stored within until we need it. Days, months, maybe years later. The heart has more memory than the mind. I am yet to find a soul that has been awakened by facts and reason.
Close your eyes. Place a hand over your heartspace. Take a deep breath with me. Then take another. Then when you are ready, reopen your eyes. Stay with this.
Congratulations! You are awake.
my heart reaching out to yours, xo Danni
Here is a sneak peek of some things you may find behind the paywall in the future. Today free for all.
This week’s tidbits (what held me, got me going, and/or touched my very center):
on substack (along with the letters mentioned in this post):
When Death Comes on Katrina’s Substack (in memory of her mom)
LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Behida Dolić! on Letter from Love with Elizabeth Gilbert
Grief is a hole. Love is a ladder on
with
my go-to vibe song this week:
Tears In Heaven (Live) by Eric Clapton
book by my bed: Dying To Be Me by Anita Moorjani
what soothed me this week: definitely my yoga mat, sitting and reading in the sun
meditation: THE PRACTICE OF JOY, 12 Minute Guided Meditation to enter a place of joy & gratitude