I was twenty when my great grandmother died, twenty-two when my grandfather followed.
I held my grandfather's hand in the hospital room on the day he died. His beloved, dead body, though cold and grey, looked younger than I had ever known it to be. Death unwrinkled his once-wrinkled forehead.
For months Grief felt like an ugly creature in the hallow part of my chest: the claustrophobic thing never stopped beatings its wings.
I felt distanced from grief over the last couple of years. Or more accurately, I assumed the illusion of distance. Over time the grief I felt over the loss of my grandfather closed its wings and fell asleep in my heart. Of course there were moments when the veracious beast fluttered, woken by memory, but I learned to find respite in the space between each of its winged beats.
Last month, I learned that a close friend of mine had died. The illusion that I was now distanced from grief shattered like a rock-threwn-window. Grief arrived suddenly, unbidden but not unwelcome, and I had this uncomfortable feeling that grief had been waiting a long time to return.
There is a flat on Narrow Street that looks out onto the curb where Spert Street and Narrow Street meet. From the outside, the flat has a balanced composition of brick and vine. The vine, a climbing hydrangea, grows above the window – nurtured and well-maintained.
Last night I went for a walk along the river. I walked by the flat on my way. Wind (washed ashore by the Thames river) forced the climbing hydrangea into a dance. There was intricacy in its colour – each leaf moved by (and moving through) green shades of light.
I watched the leaves dance, charmed by the vine which covered the front window frame with little buds, using its growth to reshape the flat's sharp edges.
I thought about the person (or people) who lived in the flat. I imagine that they routinely tend the vine to ensure that it does not grow wild and unruly and prevent it from obstructing the window.
Grief is like a climbing vine because it becomes a force of obstruction when we neglect it. But if we learn to tend our grief with great care, we recover our capacity to love and behold love in the world.
When I look into the world, I see (inevitably) many things that grieve me. Like a climbing vine, grief has the power to shape what we look at. This is profound. For what we choose to look at reflects what we consider to be most worthy of our attention.
My husband and I were married on 10 July 2024. Our wedding was bucolic, lovely and reverent. We committed our vows in a chapel-style building at Forbes of Kingennie Country Resort, Scotland. Many of our close family members and friends were there with us.
Our wedding glitters like a soft and iridescent glow in the corner of my mind; a tear. I use the visual of a tear to describe my wedding because tears signify the overflow of a deeply moving experience. So it was with our wedding, which touched the very depth of my heart.
Like a tear borne of pure and unrestrained emotion, marriage is borne of pure and unrestrained devotion. Marriage recognises the dichotomic relationship between grief and love, as seen in the vows to remain faithful through "sickness and health, poverty and wealth."
My husband and I were forced to acknowledge the co-habitual nature of grief and love when we recited the wedding vows. We realised that grief and love would be the unifying crux of our married lives – much the way that God's grief over sin and love for those who sinned met in the body of Christ on the cross.
"Is not the cup of love a participation in the blood of Christ?" wrote the apostle Paul. Marriage reflects God's commitment to love us in moments of grief. In this way, Love is more than reflection – it represents an interaction with the kind of grief that leads us back – and further in – to love.
Grief and love moved quietly, in tandem, through my wedding. Grief and love glittering in the eyes of my parents, my siblings, my grandmother, my husband, etc. Even though I grieved those who could no longer be with me, I remembered their love for me. In grieving, I remembered; and in remembering, I felt their love.
Grief is difficult to quantify because it has "no concrete form – no beginning and no end, no ceiling or floor." Like grief, love also "has no beginning and no end." Psychologist and author Heide Preiebe sums it up beautifully when she writes
"Grief is a giant neon sign, protruding through everything, pointing everywhere, broadcasting loudly 'Love was here.' In the finer print," quietly promising, "'Love still is.'"
. . .
Smith, Karl Thomas. Now Go: On Grief and Studio Ghibli (Inklings, 2022).
Voskamp, Ann. How Do You Pray In Times Like These & When Life's Really Hard.
Mark 12:30 - 31.
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