Voluntary Grief

I've always loved the reciprocity of volunteering.  I lend a hand and am blessed in the process.  It's a selfish form of giving, but it also keeps life in perspective.  Lending a hand, without getting any product or paycheck in return, broadens my limited worldview.  Volunteering reveals needs I never knew existed, and helps me find the common thread of humanity I so often overlook.

So I volunteered recently to be the performing story-teller at a weekend summer camp, a major event coordinated by a close friend who works for a Hospice Organization.  This camp is for children ages 6-15 who have lost a close family member or friend in the past year.  I was eager to dig deep, write my first fiction play, and embody the character of a young girl who had recently lost her father.  I was anxious about the timing of the weekend, because it fell directly after volunteering for five straight days as a third grade VBS teacher, but this was for a unique cause, and I was prepared to do it all.

Or, I thought I was.  That Saturday morning I readied myself alongside the other volunteers but could never anticipate the soul-shattering experience of reading each child's name tag--his or her own name scrawled on top and the person who died written underneath. 

So. Many. Dead. Parents.

The tears welled up, and I wanted to go fetal in a dark corner, but I swallowed them down saying "Dacia this is NOT about you."  I did what I came to do.  I played Zoe, the young girl who lost her father, and I loved the stage.  I enjoyed so much of the process, but it was the children and their grief that shook me to my core.  I knew nothing of that thick, dark matter.  My childhood grief was the fog, the haze, the nebulous loss of humans who were gone but still alive.  Theirs was forever gone.  Mom, Dad, forever gone.

It was part of their story, their reality, and they played games, stared past me, swore under their breath.  One boy who played on the fire trucks and ambulance, which arrived to bring joy, made the long slow sound of a machine which flat-lines while he sat on the bench, legs swinging beneath him.  One girl piled high the whipped cream on her ice cream sundae and sat next to me, never making eye contact, never eating past the rainbow sprinkles on top.

There were children who melt down when lettuce touched their sandwiches and children who commanded the attention of everyone in their group with vibrant smiles and bright chatter.  By the early afternoon, I recognized my greater role was to sit beside them, make myself available, and observe their grief.

Grief and death command recognition and reverence.  Who truly wants to volunteer to observe and participate in grief?  In America?  Hardly anyone.  We love the reciprocity of good neighbors, sharing that weed wacker, and the school P.T.O. raising money for scholarships.  We love lending a hand when a friend is moving or baking cookies when someone's anniversary needs to be celebrated.  But how many of us love to enter into someone else's grief?

I have a very close friend, her youngest child is my son's bestie, who is slowly saying goodbye to her husband as I type this post.  I stopped by this morning to drop off a meal (how easy was that?) and was stunned to see her man's decline.  Yes, I wanted to back away.  Yes, I told myself it's because she needs privacy right now.  But does she really?  Or am I uncomfortable.  No question mark there.  I am uncomfortable.  There is no reciprocity in death, unless it's the reciprocity of grief.

We will only expand our hearts to one another in this crazy, messed-up world, if we're willing to volunteer in the bless and in the mess.  How horribly church-lady of me to say that, but it's true.  We will stumble through it, maybe miss a lot of cues, but it is far better to volunteer for grief than never at all.

* * * * *

Side note:  there is always a shortage of volunteers in Hospice organizations.  It can be the most quiet work, simply sitting by a bed, but it's one of the holiest experiences you can have...to be witness to someone's birth into the next life.

The Spring Disturbance

Spring is my favorite season of the year.  At least it used to be.  Everything is becoming new again!  Wake up trees! Wake up leaves on the trees!  Wake up grass and flowers, birds and SHUT UP BIRDS. 

The bright morning is SO early this year, and if it was simply waking me for an early rise complete with fresh coffee and solitude, I would marry Spring every year.  But it's waking every mother-lovin' member of my household at the butt-crack of dawn except for my husband.  Smart, Mike. 

My cats are still Winter fat, so their small paws that press good-morning against the ridge of my side-sleeping body feel like a branding iron.  My youngest son is delighted to jump into bed with me, because I ignore him during the day, and the early sun is an invitation to access mom when she's down.  As soon as my coffee pot begins percolating, my older son who sleeps above the kitchen, in a room with four windows pointing alarm clock East, is roused and leaps down the stairs to greet me.

Ah well.  Spring is for waking up.  Summer for wilting into rest.  Fall for...whatever, I just want some alone time.  Here's a gem from last November, when everything is DARK in the morning.

Small Sky

This cramped house,

to which I still add books, cats, and picture frames,

has windows in each room

but ceilings that hang so low my sun salutation

becomes a knuckle scrape across popcorn finish.

Once I could sit in the living room rocker,

view our vegetable garden and a slice of the sun

rising behind oak trees lined with mist and blush clouds,

but my tabby cat now has his perch beside that window

to survey the cardinals who flit about my neighbor's wiry brush.

I can sit behind his feline throne, wait until he leaves

to chase away his narrow-nosed brother,

but now the oak trees have extended their reach,

each year widening a frame around my small sky.

Today, there is a stream of white light

slowly dissolving into a stroke of gray.

I fix my eye on that gleam

and journal in pencil,

altering my world where I can.   

Dacia R. Ball ~ November 2017

Witness and Wonder

Water from the spigot rushes over red boots,

Pools gather rapidly around them,

brimful buckets sway back and forth

drenching plants already damp from the storm. 

Where would the world be without children

who fetch pails of water?

At times the kitchen sink is all they find

for the sacramental filling and pouring—

Whispers uttered over sour cream containers

submerged in a mixing bowl lake. 

People rescued, fires put out, boats capsized, 

the front of their clothing dark and heavy,

saturated with wonder.

At best, I am ready, 

towels in hand, raising shirts

bound to goose-pimpled skin. 

My breaths are deep,

pull the mind

back to the heart. 

Order is secondary.

Witness the moment

that cannot keep.

Write Anyway

This post was written on the first day of Fall.  I never finished it, but in an effort to get back to writing, I'm going to post it anyway.  I feel new courage to write.  My poetry group, Wordsong Poets, met tonight and encouraged me in my work.  It all takes time.  And memory.  And being centered.  Although this post ends on a somewhat angst-ridden moment, it is strangely uplifting.  OK.  I'm weird.  The reason I am seeing it in a positive light is because at the time I felt broken, but I WROTE anyway.  That is the point....to enter those moments and not let them lay stagnate.

Here it is...

Today is the first day of Fall.  We filled our bird feeder yesterday, and this morning I am distracted from my writing by a tufted titmouse and chickadee just two feet away.  Our cat is on high alert.  He stands at the screen door, tail flicking, and tracks the the flight path to and from the feeder.  It is all just too much for Chandler.  In the backyard, a chipmunk family.  In the front yard, a slew of birds.

Lion has been in Kindergarten for three weeks now.  He told us that he needs more than two days off.  My heart breaks.  I would home school him if I could, but I need help raising my children.  I can not do it alone, therefore my children are in the pathway of public schooling.  I feel broken.  Broken.  I used that word to describe myself to another stay at home mother once.  She laughed and said, "You are NOT broken."  Apparently that's impossible for a white suburban mother.

But I am broken.  I gave my life to big ideals for ten years.  I made huge sacrifices, but I lived in beauty with constant companionship and the ability to escape to solitude whenever I needed.  Granted, I was constantly battling an undercurrent of manipulation and emotional abuse.  But I fought to possess an interior life that was my own doing.  Because of my efforts, I was able to leave that abusive environment and retain a sense of faith and trust in God.  What I didn't anticipate was the utter brokenness that comes with possessing and then losing community.  My compass is smashed.

Where Did the Weather Go?

OK.  I'm not complaining.  After the winter we had last year, it was amAzing to have a light-handed winter this year.  But have you noticed that the months are no longer distinct?  I used to get to the end of March and recognize that March had happened in its entirety.  We had heavy winds.  We had the lion's roar at the start and soft lamb-like Spring showers decorating March's end.  As I recognize the shift in our weather over the past few years, this climate change, I'm seeing how my life longs for the ritual of the seasons.  I love to see how November is overcast, miserable, never glorious, but it gives way to crisp blue skies in December.  There is a natural rhythm to our lives.  The Church displays this in the liturgical year.  Advent prepares us for Christmas, a brief ordinary time yields its normalcy to Lent, then Easter and Pentecost proclaim celebration.  The remainder of the year is ordinary, a simple observance of life with a sprinkling of holy days throughout.

But the weather is changing.  Our world is experiencing a cosmic shift.  While many of us experience ordinary times as usual, there are countries in existential turmoil.  While I am bemoaning the loss of my vibrant New England variety, refugees are living in muddy tent-communes, existing on the generosity of others, unable to provide for their families without begging for help.

The liturgical year was my focus for years.  I relished the shifting rituals.  That was my home.  But I have found myself, these past 8 years, with freedom from practicing my faith in a prescribed manor.  I am outside my comfort zone, the manager of my own home, the leader of children I am still recognizing as mine.  I am comfortable, well fed, and have a purpose to live out in the ordinary times of motherhood.  But the world's shift is a mirror to my own.  I feel displaced, as though this world is strange and outside any reference I was ever given.  There is joy in my wild, unstructured days, but as I try and enter those moments of glee, anxiety crops up, making me turn my head and look for the ritual wherein I hope to rest.

And now the weather is unpredictable, it is shifting.  The world's boundaries are shifting...a source of anxiety and cosmic displacement for so many.  Where did the weather, the security of seasons go?  We can focus on the shift, the disturbance of earth and time, and inevitably find ourselves in the liturgy of fear and anxiety.  Or, we can play.  We can embrace the wild, the unpredictable, and look to bring comfort and stability to others.  We can care for ourselves and this good earth.  That is the only ritual we are capable of maintaining...the ritual of the "other."  That is where we can rest.

Silver and Gold

I attended only one Brownie meeting, but the song I learned that day has stayed with me since, and it has never, ever made sense:  Make new friends, but keep the old.  One is silver and the other gold.  It obviously stuck with me, having only heard it once, and it irritated the stuffing out of me.  Which one is silver?  Is silver as prized as gold?  Well, obviously not monetarily.  Why should I listen to this song?  What right does the song-writer have to tell me how to make and keep friends?  Yes, my brain went there at age eight.

I didn't like the Brownie meeting.  My sisters weren't there, and my mother's absence was always more profound when I didn't have two older siblings looking out for me.  There were strange women guiding us, and there were girls my age that knew so much more than me.  I ran home that day and begged my mom not to make me return.

So, this could be titled:  How the Brownies Taught Me About Myself, But Not Until I Turned 37.  I recently returned to Maryland to visit my sister and some close friends.  Well, the land pulled out all the stops for my visit.  Vibrant green fields.  Blue mountains undulating on the horizon.  Red barns scattered about, promising freshly stacked hay inside.  I was awestruck.  I was wooed by my former homeland.  I was confused by the movings of my heart, wanting to return to this familiar place.

My time with family and friends refreshed me.  I could talk with my goddaughter and her mom for six hours straight without my introverted side taking over, yelling in my brain, "I need to be ALONE!"  My sister's home was full of energy--at times we had NINE boys running through the yard, but I was taken care of so sweetly by teens and tweens cooking, cleaning up, and playing with my boys.

Returning to New England was painful for me.  I was longing to be reunited with my husband, but I was dreading the land that made me think of cold, hard winters and Puritan ancestors who could not break out in a dance while making lunch.  There are times my Scandinavian heritage confuses me.  What Dutch Reformed genes created me!?  I began looking on Zillow for houses near my sister.  I was exhausted from the long journey home.  I felt terribly alone.  And I was doubting my progress of finding friends in the seven years I had been back in Connecticut.

Within two days, I had impromptu hang-outs with two friends that I've made in the past two years.  I was encouraged and regained some hope.  I also caught up on my sleep, and all of a sudden my home and my yard weren't the worst things at which to look.  All in all, New England has been very good to me.  My life has made sense and continues to affirm me in my decision-making abilities.  But it doesn't negate the grief of losing so much time with old friends.  My heart hurts.  I struggle with discontent.  I long to merge the gold and silver of my old and new friends.  I have always been happiest with my sisters around me, and if Brownies could have been with them...well, I would have had all the badges in the world.  But merging old and new is hardly ever possible.  I need to embrace both, however separate they may be.  I will love both and make both my priority.

My Maryland Best Friend (smile) gave me a cosmos plant this past May.  It has grown in my New England garden, and today it bloomed.  I have many treasures in this life.  The key is to cherish the one before me.

Clam Digger

I could clam for hours

off the dock of Grandma’s cottage.

Her island home, my launch pad

to the secret life and danger

of the sea.

Ben and Julia tread water beside me,

linking arms with the rowboat that leaves

flecks of green paint in our elbow creases.

We welcome the rising tide

while Amy stays inside, waiting to eat

the cherry stones raw. I am a hunter,

racing against the dark, so clever with my toes.

Seeing with limbs more swift than my cousin

or sister, I feel through dense sand and deep

water, cold tide lapping the back of my neck.

My mother hollers from the kitchen,

calling me to dinner, but I wrestle

between sunset and the bucket near full.

I am hungry to uncover the colony.

The ocean floor is thick and devouring,

but these toes can burrow

and find clams until my bones

cramp with cold.

The last of the sun is spreading

its umber light across the sound.

I steady myself on the rocking boat,

give my feet time to think,

and dive, maneuvering my fingers

past razor clams, securing the little necks

for our family’s blue ribbon chowder.