Grief/Loss/Feelings Tag

09 Oct

Posted at 22:47h in Sarah's Journal by

A pod of grievers meet at low tide at the edge of the Thames in earshot of St Paul’s. We make a circle from mud-larked bones and oyster shells. We are here to mark the death of the humpback whale marooned by hunger or disorientation in the estuary. A whale vertibrae the size of a child’s skull is passed round the circle. It is porous, white and lighter than I imagined. One by one we sing to the spirit of this whale, sing it home on a river of tears and gratitude. Hump backed whales mourn each other with song. I don’t find the words to express my sense of loss. I am dismayed by this example of the dislocation from right-relationship between place, food and the hierarchy of species in the natural world. This is a profound breach of natural order, an out of place death. How big a sign will it take before we recognise the extent of our selfishness?

04 Oct

Posted at 17:40h in Sarah's Journal by

I have been wondering when it begins – the shutting down of grief in community? On trains recently I have been aware of parents shushing babies and toddlers. Is it because we have become intolerant of other people’s children crying? Parents feel embarrassment and shame at their child’s public bawling. Have we become judges of parental failings and tired babies (either real or projected)? Are we just so uncomfortable with our own sorrows that we want to banish others’ into private spaces? We are programmed to respond to these cries, but when does soothing and calming become silencing? Can we hold baby’s screaming and wailing more compassionately as a collective?

25 Sep

Posted at 22:06h in Sarah's Journal by

A selection of apparently unrelated items nestle in the crematorium waiting room. They have each been chosen to give the illusion of comfort and safety in an environment that most will encounter during a period of very uncomfortable loss of emotional safety. The artifice of these flowers, the institutional furniture, intended to make me feel at home, highlights instead the way the business of dying has been hived off away from the clutter of home and family life.

20 Sep

Posted at 19:51h in Book Reviews by

“If there is ever to be any real peace on earth, all people need to relearn and re-establish the now diminished and hidden arts of Grief and Praise, for one without the other is not possible.” Martin Prechtel’s uncompromising and passionate message rubs off the page. His words seduce with rowdy charm. He urges us to shake off our avoidance of grief, to embrace life through praise, to recognise the consequences of the “unmetabolized war grief of past generations”. Ideas grown in hot dry New Mexico land amongst sage, marjoram and lavender, taking root in a very English garden.

16 Sep

Posted at 18:07h in Culture Reviews by

I often listen to Cariad Lloyd’s chatty podcast. She talks to comedians about grief and death. At the Podcast Festival I watch a live recording of ‘Grief Cast’ featuring Keemah Bob, Jenny Bede and Tom Parry. Cariad is personable, asks questions which invite saying the unsayable in a very natural way. In response we laugh at the pomp of social norms around death, share dark tales of funeral meets lavatory humour and demystify the secrecy around the process of death and dying. Afterwards I play at interviewer, re-wind the questions in my head.www.cariadlloyd.com/griefcast

 

14 Sep

Posted at 14:14h in Sarah's Journal by

Usually the documentarian, this time I am under scrutiny. Our smiles mirror through the lens. I wear only one silver ring, my fingers often marked by ink. The words that waltz and foxtrot daily in my head unexpectedly tumble out in torrents. I am excited by the problems behind the enquiry. How do we welcome in mortality? How can we reclaim a deeper knowing of the cycle of life and death? What is the most effective way to change our relationship with grief? My unbridled ideas pour out, some of which may snag on the researcher’s hook to be reeled in.

28 Aug

Posted at 21:43h in Culture Reviews by

This is an acerbic, witty slice of the politics of 1988. It shows a stone hurled from Thatcher’s Britain and the consequences reverberating into 2019. Lindsay Duncan and Alex Jennings spar with brilliance as a tory minister and his bitingly sarcastic wife. The punch, however, when it comes demonstrates the destructive power of undigested grief. Simon Woods underlying manifesto is a prayer for compassion.
www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/hansard

23 Aug

Posted at 13:57h in Sarah's Journal by

Droplets of water sweat inside the plastic pocket, ink slowly dissolves to turquoise. A black and white cat is missing – lost, injured, dead? I wonder about the untold story, the ending. I wish the neighbourhood was full of posters bright with fresh pictures of found cats. At the miraculous return of one cat I heard about recently, I felt tears rise to my eyes, my breath quickening.

 

01 Aug

Posted at 14:39h in Sarah's Journal by

On the page before love in the Collins Paperback English dictionary is loss. Love is not always guaranteed, loss is. If it hasn’t found you already, it’s coming. It arrives in infinite forms – ‘everything you love you will lose’ (Francis Weller), and everything else too. ‘Everything changes’ is a universal truth. The dictionary describes loss in the form of a transaction, without the weight that it may carry. While bringing suffering and sorrow, the flipside of loss can be relief and liberation. Will you be ready to open the door when loss comes, and invite it in?