On Grief and Quiet Moments

April is a strange time of the year for me – rather it’s an anniversary of a death that brought my life to a screeching halt, put me in an eating recovery program, and ultimately sent my life in a direction I never anticipated. It’s been years now, and frankly, I am in the best place I’ve ever been. That said, it doesn’t mean that this time year isn’t filled with melancholy for me. I’m more prone to bouts of crying and wanting to hide in my bedroom and simply do nothing. Knowing that this is the case for me during this time of year, I keep a couple things in mind. One, I set some precautions. This means that I sit down with safe people and be realistic about how I may respond to this time of year and ask them to keep an eye on things like how much I’m eating, sleeping, drinking, isolating, etc. They usually have some good suggestions about behavioural benchmarks as well. Second, I have built rituals over the years in order to have a way to directly acknowledge the grief and give it safe space to wash over me. I take the time to honour those rituals. I have found that by allowing those moments to have recognised space I’m not holding the grief in an unhealthy way, and while it’s hard in the moment, there is relief on the other side of that moment. Third, I look for things that can produce quiet remembrance and meaning. This is different from moments of grief. For example, I searched for a garnet eternity band. This doesn’t mean anything to someone who is just looking at my ring, but it is the same colour as the red poppies that are often used as a symbol for World War One veterans. I was in England when I was first starting to pull through my initial grieving process. During the time period we were there, we encountered a lot of memorials full of red poppies, and I have now built an association.

This year, I had an early day when grief hit me hard, and I have leaned into the third thing I do. I reached out and requested a couple of things. The first was a knock out rose bush. This is a significant plant to me because those are the flowers we used at the funeral. The second was flower seeds. A lot of those flower seeds are still in the mail, but that’s okay. I decided that I wanted to put a vertical planter that we could fill with flowers, so we’re currently building that. Flowers create such a wonderful pop of colour, and I wanted to extend that into more parts of the garden with painted markers, so Becky and I sat down with several terracotta planters, lots of river rocks, and our collection of paint. Our pets also joined us, and it was a nice time all around.

I find the process of painting to be soothing and relaxing. My mind wanders a bit, and it was a beautiful day outside. It was also really nice to get to do something with Becky. We haven’t had a lot of opportunities to really do things together, and we have decided to find more activities we can do together. Painting isn’t something we often do together since she is the one more likely to paint, but this was a great way to spend time this weekend. Becky focused on the terracotta pots that I’m going to stack up once we have all the paint sealed. We’re going to be putting various flowers into these pots, and hopefully we’ll have a tower of flowers in a couple weeks.

I chose to focus on painting river rocks to put into each of the planters so that one, we can remember what we put where, and two so we have happy pops of colour in the mostly green plants.

I’m really excited about putting these into the garden. It was really nice outside, and I felt really accomplished by the end. Becky and I got to spend some quality time together. We’re going to have really nice things in our garden. I get to have a tower of flowers that are meaningful for me from a remembrance perspective. I have created the space to go to when I’m feeling melancholy as well.

I think it’s imperative when we have grief that we create the space to simply let it wash over us. By allowing ourselves to experience the grief we give it an outlet so that it doesn’t consume us. I know our culture strives to push away all the “negative” emotions, but I would argue that all emotions are just that - emotions. Our bodies produce a physiological response to emotional stimuli, and we have to acknowledge that. When we don’t we experience physical symptoms. I understand how tempting it is to push away sadness or grief - I did it for so long I couldn’t get myself back on an even keel and ended up in a recovery program. I urge you to create this sort of space. You can see that this wasn’t an evening full of crying and sadness - it was a space that provided peace and sanctuary. It’s a piece of remembering that is now tinged with a happy memory too.

I wish you all the love and peace that comes when we acknowledge our hurts and griefs.