grief

Change

~ Mimi Ray ~ Leave a comment

A resistance to change is a resistance to life itself.

If that statement prompts uncomfortable feelings, you are not alone. It seems that a great deal of what we do, and pursue, in our lives is in fact resistant to the intrinsic nature of life. Thinking about it honestly it’s hard to deny that life is change, hence the many variations of that observation and its expression by poets, philosophers, intellectuals and artists the world over.

There are, of course, changes we accept fairly easily, or at least grumble about less, because we perceive that they benefit us and are generally positive. And then there are the changes and the changing nature of what we prefer that we resist, sometimes to our detriment. I’m trying at any given moment (as I’m fairly certain you are) to exert some influence over how and when change impacts me, and that is not only understandable, but often necessary for my survival both real and perceived.

When I think about the idea that resistance to change is resistance to life itself, and that death is the ultimate change, our resistance all along the way would thereby seem to ensure that when the time comes it will be all the more difficult. I don’t mean to infer that death would somehow not be difficult at all if we weren’t resistant to change, but rather the more frequently we unconsciously brace and maneuver against other inevitable life changes (in relationships, grief, age, and illness for example) the harder we are making it for ourselves and others. And given that culturally we are death phobic, it makes sense to me that a general aversion to change over lifetimes and generations, has been a significant factor in our great fear of death and our struggles with feeling our grief and having it supported when our loved ones die.

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A poet whose work I love died recently. I was lucky enough to hear them live as part of a spoken word evening when slam poetry was just becoming a thing years ago. I told Kissie about it. Now, as I’m trying to place when something happened, the passage of time is marked before and after her death.

“When nothing softens the grief, may grief soften me.” -Andrea Gibson

Memory II

~ Mimi Ray ~ 2 Comments

In pondering more about revisiting memories and allowing my mind and heart to be open, I find it helpful to differentiate it from rumination. Rumination is more of a closed loop recollection of an event, as I alluded to in my last post. It relies on the mind replaying the same details and outcomes over and over without an opening. So what exactly do I mean by that? If something happened a certain way and I allow for something else to now be a part of that previous memory, I am not just rewriting history?

Rewriting history would mean a deliberate distortion for a particular aim. To make myself feel better, justify behavior I chose in the moment, etc. That’s not what I mean. By an opening, or an open loop, in regard to a grief related memory, I mean the attitude of mind and heart that there may have been more that took place than I was able to comprehend at the time. It’s an attitude that allows that I cannot at any given time, see and hear and digest all the details around me. It is accepting that my memory of something is not the complete picture – not that it isn’t important or accurate or insightful – just that it might be incomplete. That there could be more and finer detail and perspective than my mind was able to perceive at the time. That attitude allows the opening in which the “memory of a memory” that I missed can bubble up into my consciousness. I didn’t see it at the time or remember it because I wasn’t able to. Maybe the circumstances were just too painful or overwhelming. So it must be looked at again in the mind, almost as if with “the eye of the heart,” like the ear of the heart is to the benedictine practice of lectio divina.

Allowing memory visitation is dedication to a belief that some previously unknown insights are waiting for me to catch up. Their existence and emergence can happen with my willingness and openness. Memories can and do ossify, but who decides when and how? As I shared last time, it’s daunting and lonely to show up for a grief practice that has no social or cultural etiquette. I do it because the revelations and communiqués I’ve received have been sustenance to me and also from some urging to continue that I can’t explain. It feels a little dangerous, too, because of all that’s out there about grief from the field of psychology, especially in the last 10 years. Not that I don’t think psychology can be hugely helpful when it comes to grief, it can and has been vital for me. But it also feels very limiting and outcome driven and overly rational to the point of diminishment. Death and grief can be approached and perhaps understood and integrated more without stripping away all vestiges of mystery.