Grief in the Time of…

Posted on March 18, 2020 by Shawndra Miller

How is it for you? Are you feeling like the floor under your feet has turned to water?

Myself, I can’t keep a thought in my head today. My short-term memory is shot. My muscles are all in a bunch. It was a day to get back to work after taking time off for my 96-year-old father-in-law’s funeral (a whole other surreal COVID-19 story). I pulled it together for a few hours, with effort–and with the support of my management team, who are wonderful people, who are reeling themselves.

Grief is part of my disorientation. Not just grief over our family’s loss, but grief over the “new normal” that so far feels anything but normal. In my area we are not (yet) on lockdown, but are instructed to stay at home unless we need to go to work, buy groceries, or get other necessities.

I know that many are dealing with greater losses and unspeakable pain, but my private grief is this: I miss my routine, my work camaraderie, my writing group, my yoga buddies, and the studio where I practice yoga several times a week. I miss knowing I can give a friend a hug without hesitation. I miss feeling like I know what to expect in the near future (even if that sense of security was always an illusion, at bottom.)

As my manager put it, “We are all mourning the loss of life as we knew it.”

And we had the first COVID-19 death in my county a few days ago. It feels horribly sad: The person’s partner could not be there, because of being quarantined at home. The couple had to say their goodbyes via iPad. Can you imagine?

(If you are experiencing deep sorrow, you may be interested in this Community Grief Ritual happening remotely on Friday.)

We have to be strong, kind, and brave now, and lift each other as best we can. On my neighborhood Facebook group, someone has changed the banner photo to a drawing of children in a sunlit field and the words “Tiny Acts of Kindness.”

I’m lucky: my immediate neighborhood is already tightknit. But I suspect this period of uncertainty will draw many more people closer together. I hear stories of people talking with neighbors they haven’t seen in years… supplying toilet paper when a friend’s stocks are low (yes, it’s a real issue!)… and willingly going into the grocery store to shop for an elderly couple sitting in their car afraid to enter the store. Total strangers, mind you. People in general are being soft and caring with each other.

This thing we are going through together–affecting all of us, the entire world–has the potential to open us up, if we let it.

Pea shoots, chickweed, salad burnett from my backyard

Are we self-perceived rugged individualists/proud nationalists evolving into a global community with the help of viral activity that shows us how truly interconnected we are?

Lest you point to ugly behaviors we might see in our social media feeds, consider this. For every mean story that gets magnified and reposted and outraged over (oh how we love to be outraged!), there are thousands of tiny acts of kindness that go unmagnified. And big ones too. We may be wired to notice and dwell on the ugly (negativity bias, anyone?) but we can train ourselves to see and celebrate and savor the good.

Gratitude: My major gratitude for a dreary day was the first chickweed harvest of the year. Chickweed grows abundantly, for free (they don’t call it a weed for nothing). It is a succulent little salad addition. I also celebrate the harvest of salad burnet that wintered over in my garden tower, and Austrian winter pea shoots that I planted last fall.

(It just occurred to me that I could have added chives to my salad too, but I spaced it.)

Tip of the Day: Forgive yourself everything. Others too. Practice radical compassion. If ever the phrase “Life’s too short” applied, I would say it does now. Not sure how? Here’s Rick Hanson, one of the wisest teachers around, on the subject.

Resources of the Day: I thought I would post some food options today since that is a basic need we all have, and speaking for myself, I can get triggered if I feel like I will run out. There is an abundance of food available. Indy-area people: Check out Becker Farms (local meat/eggs), Indy’s Food Coop (organic produce and more), Azure Standard (bulk items and more–there is a local drop but it is national).

Here’s a list of places where students can be fed while out of school because of coronavirus.

Also check out this marvelous recipe compilation, offering many great ways to use up nonperishable items you might already have on hand.

Till next time, friends. Feel free to comment with more resources, tips, or anything else you want to say.

Transition and Transformation

Posted on July 16, 2015 by Shawndra Miller

Every writer should have a worm colony to eat her spent words. Especially if she’s grieving the loss of her beloved dog.

His name was Marley. We named him after the great Bob Marley. (This was before “Marley and Me.”)

I feed my drafts to the shredder when they’ve served their purpose. The shredder cross-cuts everything into bits the width of a highlighter’s stroke, the length of the tiniest paperclip. When the receptacle is full, I shower this ticker tape parade over one of four worm farms I’ve got going right now.

Worm pit after ticker tape parade, with rainwater.

Are they actually eating my words or are they just nesting there, my happy, scrappy red wigglers, snug in moist paper and a bit of soil and leaves? With rotting vegetable parings for their buffet.

I wrote once long ago, or stole the idea, of everything in a writer’s life becoming compost. “It’s all material,” an early writing teacher told me. Now even my stilted phrases and test drafts and failed pieces have become compost.

I’m feeding the worms that in turn offer their pooped-out product to nourish my soil—soil in which we grow the food that feeds the writer who makes the words that shelter the worms. A closed loop.

Also in the worm bins? Junk mail, that clutters my desk until I go on a shredding rampage. Cardboard toilet paper rolls chopped into bits. Tea leaves from my tea ball. Shed leaves from houseplants. Newspapers. Anything else I can think of: Q tips, napkins, toothpicks, and other rarely used ephemera.

Also: Mats cut from the cat’s britches, tangled there over weeks of neglect while I worried over her brother, the dog. Tissues loaded with my snot and tears, from meltdowns over that same dog’s decline.

Moistened with rainwater, it all melts together into the special kind of slop that worms (I’m told) adore—sweetened with handfuls of veggie scraps and stale crackers and the like.

Worms at work

The dog died; the worms and time work together to turn something lost into something gained.

Sweet dreams, friend.

An Unexpected Gift

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Shawndra Miller

Yesterday, Father’s Day, brought me an unexpected gift. A neighbor messaged me late in the evening offering just-picked raspberries. Would we like some? Of course! “Check on your porch by the mailbox,” she messaged a few minutes later.

My dessert: raspberries, kefir, vanilla, toasted sunflower seeds.

How was she to know that red raspberries would bring me a direct connection with my Dad, who grew them up until the year he died? His overabundance was always my gain. Even the container they came in, a repurposed plastic food tub, evoked his (and Mom’s) habit of reusing everything.

They’re half gone already, because I had some for breakfast too.

A friend tells me this morning, Surely that was a gift straight from your father.

I miss him. On Friday I received a quilt specially made from a few of the T shirts he used to wear. Yesterday morning I put my cheek against that “Seize the Carp” square and imagined his heart beating under the fabric.

Many thanks to Helen Ryan-King for making this for me.

No one else will ever love me the way he loved me, a friend wrote, on losing her own dad.

A statement true and sad.

So many of us walk around with broken hearts. I think of the Buddhist story of the woman mad with grief after the death of her only child. The Buddha offers to bring the child back, but only if she can find a mustard seed from a house untouched by death.

She searches house to house. Here someone has lost a parent, there a child, there a beloved brother, there a cherished friend. She comes back and tells the Buddha, I couldn’t find anyone untouched by loss.

She lets the child go.

Knowing we all share this human experience, I want to open to the love that is available all around me, in so many forms.

A couple I know slightly from down the street, seeing me standing on my bike in the bike lane, slow their car to check on me: “You OK?” (Just waiting for a break in traffic to make a dicey turn—but it touches me to hear their concern.)

A cat named Morty, leery of everyone but his deceased owner, finds me on my front step. Rubs against my knee, beaks my nose with his. Hello, new friend.

A concert of singing bowls, vibrating with tabla, flute, and didgeridoo, offers me a place to rest in All That Is.

What I want to say is this: May my broken heart be of service. May I remember that this brokenness is something we all share. May our connection help to heal a broken world.