When grief speaks and love answers
Risking our vulnerability can invite being seen in ways we never imagined.
I did not plan to write about my dad’s death the day he died.
At the time, I had a column, Life in LaLa Land, that ran in two daily Philadelphia area newspapers. I was in St. Lucia, where my dad lived (and my family is from), having spent the last four days at his bedside in the hospital.
He died in the afternoon on October 15, 2012, surrounded by loved ones, song, prayer. Carried, I’d like to imagine, by our gentle encouragement to let go, by the final words we wrapped around him, each of us finding our own language for “I love you,” our own way past what hurt and scared and troubled us to be present to his leave-taking, the breath that bore him where we could not go.
I remember how peaceful those moments felt to me. Peaceful, tender, transcendent. A container large enough to hold us in our devastation and devotion. I remember, too, falling apart, sobbing in my cousin’s arms just outside his room once the doctors came in to declare him dead. The rest of the day is a blur.
I cannot recall what filled the hours, how they arranged themselves around more tears, maybe even laughter, the slow shock of sending news, holding emptiness, saying the words — who knows how many times? — “He died. He’s gone. He passed.”
That night, much like the ones before it, I could not sleep. I was staying with my Aunt Kandie, who’d offered me her bed while she slept in the living room. As the darkness inched deeper around me, and my mind roamed, wrestling with the truth of this new life before me, I reached for my journal.
I wrote because I couldn’t think what else to do. Wanted, perhaps, the salve I often found in giving my heart to the page, or maybe some kind of anchoring in this tenuous reality. A documentation beyond the imprint of what the body carried, what it always would. A place to start, when morning came: this is the terrible, beautiful thing that’s happened. These are the last days between a daughter and her dad.
I wasn’t writing a column. Wasn’t thinking of my audience of readers back home. Or even my editor, who had no expectations of me, who’d himself been away when I got the news of my dad’s hospitalization and hastily made plans to fly home.
But the next day, I sat at my aunt’s computer and typed up what I’d written. I emailed it to my editor, acknowledging he did not have to publish it. That I was as surprised to send my words as I was to have written them, but here they were…an accounting, an announcing, and, in hindsight, a preparing to re-enter the familiar as if sensing just how unfamiliar my everyday life would feel.
The paper published the piece about my dad’s death as a column while I was gone. And because it was out there, because I’d said the thing that would be so hard to say, over and over again, I created a softer landing to walk back into my working world. An opening to bring my fragile, timid, sorrowing self. To be met by love and care.
Recently, Sarah Davis, my Breathing Wind podcast co-host, and I had a conversation with the poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Rosemerry, in talking about the death of her son Finn in 2021, mentioned the waves of love that flooded her — and still keep coming — when she shared the news of his death with readers of her poetry blog. How less alone she felt, how supported and seen she felt to have a community of readers — along with the community in her small town — show up for her in the midst of profound heartbreak.
She told us: “I am more aware now than ever of how much love is available to us all all the time — I feel I have been so carried by it, so infused with it, so humbled by it.”
I did not know this would happen to me, too. Did not set out to write my column expecting to be on the receiving end of so much tenderness. To get emails and voicemails steeped in warmth and compassion and even an invitation to dinner. To have readers I’d never met stop me in public to hug me, to sympathize.
I’d been originally scheduled to perform a wedding consultation when I was in St. Lucia. The director of the nondenominational nonprofit through which I officiate weddings shared my column with the future bride and groom, noting our meeting would have to be postponed. In an email I wouldn't see until I returned, they told me to take as long as I needed to reschedule and that they appreciated the chance to read about and get to know my dad. They wished me every comfort on “the road of grief and healing” I had just began to walk.
The day I returned to work, tremulous, reluctant, not sure I could face the cacophony of a newsroom, the first person to greet me before I even entered the building was our receptionist. She was on her way to run an errand. All she might have said was my name before my eyes filled. I let her hold me, then gently wipe the tears from my cheeks before I walked inside.
My boss took one look at my face, ushered me into an empty office and let me sob in his arms.
Co-workers stopped by my desk. Someone sent flowers. I was checked on. In a culture that continually resists and shies away from grief, my column had carved a space for me to be seen — though I did not fully realize this, could not have articulated what I’d felt then until our recent conversation with Rosemerry, when she expressed her absolute trust in love and life to hold her.
I know this is not everyone’s experience. Many prefer to grieve in private, welcome work as a distraction and escape. Some would be embarrassed and uncomfortable by an outpouring of empathy and compassion. But I needed that nourishment, needed to know I could show up without having to pretend I was the same person I was when I left. I needed to be real.
Which is such a big part of what grief asks of us: to be vulnerable. To inhabit and attend to the fullness of our feelings. To honor what’s true for us moment to moment, which sometimes means giving into numbness and distraction, as long as we return to the ground of our sorrow and give it room to speak, to move, to breathe.
Learning to trust our openness as a door that lets love in.
Upcoming spaces for grief support
This monthly, in-person grief care offering will invite space to speak and express our sorrows and to connect with each other while leaning into support. Sessions may include meditation, journaling, ritual and other nourishing practices and are held at a beautiful wellness center nestled in the woods in Rittenhouse Town, Philadelphia. Sign up here to join me.
"Whatever you're writing down, even if you’re writing something sad or hard, usually you feel better after you do it. Somehow, you’re given a sense of, ‘OK, this mood, this sorrow I’m feeling, this trouble I’m in, I’ve given it shape. It’s got a shape on the page now. So I can stand back, I can look at it, I can think about it a little differently. What do I do now?” ~ Naomi Shihab Nye
This four-week workshop, offered through Write Pittsburgh, is an invitation to tend your grief by writing about it. We’ll use the words of poets navigating their own grief journeys to reflect on how their words touch our losses and to access what wants to be revealed and honored as we companion our grief. You don’t have to be a poet or writer to attend. This isn’t a craft workshop but a space to explore and express your grief through writing.
Learn more here.
Join the party!
Last year, I joined the producer and host of the Breathing Wind podcast, Sarah Davis, to host a three-episode series, Joy as Resilience. We had such an energizing and inspired time working together! This year I’ve joined Sarah as co-host of the podcast, which is all about journeying introspectively through grief and loss. Centering warm, honest conversations that invite us to reflect on what’s alive and true for us in our grief. We’re kicking off our first season as co-hosts with a free virtual launch party.
Learn more and sign up here and subscribe to be part of Season 4’s conversations wherever you get your podcasts.
Really enjoyed this tender offer to vulnerability. Beautifully done.