Threshold ritual for grief

 

I think it was an hour ago when my friend texted that her husband had died the day before. She said she was about to call the funeral home.

So I just texted back that I was so sorry, and was thinking of her. She had been expecting his death for some time.

I also texted a virtual hug, and availability to talk via phone or in person. I left it to her as to when. (Maybe that's a good plan, but if I don't hear from her today, I may call myself later.)

Then I noticed my own feelings.

She's not a pagan, but a humanist. For her this is the end of his existence. For me it's just a transition of the spirit of that man to another form. 

I honor her own beliefs of course. But for me I stopped and stood in the threshold to my bedroom.

I just stood there thinking of transitions. I wanted to say goodbye and pleasant journeys to that man (I'm not using him name because it's his spirit, his life and his death and I respect that). But for me there was the remembering of my Pagan Book of the Dead which used to sit on that shelf by the doorway. I wanted to reach out for it but it's packed already. Then I thought of the Prayer for the Dead which Byron Ballard shares when folks in the Mother Grove Church transition from life.

(I shared Byron's Prayer for the Dead on my blog a while ago.)

But for me I just stood there. And realized I was doing ritual.

Threshold standing between life and death.

It's a new ritual, or just one that occurred naturally.

I faced the doorway, perpendicular to traffic through it, being just in it. Facing south for some reason. I woke then to my own consciousness being in ritual, giving a grieving moment a space separate from daily life.

 Then eventually I turned east and looked at the empty bed in my own bedroom. But that's when tears formed in my eyes. Thinking of my friend who now will be dealing with the loss of her partner of many years. And feeling how that might feel for her, though I've never had such a long term relationship. If there's anything I can do to help her, I will certainly be there. By computer or phone if necessary! In person until I move away in 3 weeks time.

I said mentally some thoughts of wishing the spirit of that man to have peace, that the body has ceased it's functioning and it's pains. I imagined the sense that must be, to have some freedom from those sensations. And then nothingness.

I also said thanks for all the deeds that man had done in this lifetime which helped children. (I barely knew him, but knew his profession had included being a principal of an elementary school.)

And I honored his giving my friend a wonderful marriage where she could explore her own life and become my friend. She very seldom talked about him, and I usually had to ask her how he was, what he did with his own life, as she was busy with so many activities of her own interests. Many people who know her have never even realized she was married. 

In the last few weeks (maybe a month) of his life, she has had a lot of visits to hospitals, arranging where he might go after discharge, a while in a nursing facility, considering rehab, rehospitalization, tests and more tests...it has taken much of her time and energy for his care!

So today is a quiet day in honor of his life. I stand still again whenever I need to simply just be. To simply get used to the idea. Isn't that the way of grief?

The Emberlight people gave him his final bedridden days, while Hospice gave him medical care. Emberlight,** which I recently learned about, is a place for dying with dignity and love, and surrounded by caring volunteers. It uses many principles from Ram Dass, who wrote books about living and dying. It probably would not be considered Christian, but open to all faiths. 

I'm now following their Facebook page, a non-profit which does not charge patients for care.

This is the Red Oak at Emberlight which my friend photographed so we could discern what kind of oak it might be.  I posted about it over on When I Was 69 blog.

**

A donation given to Emberlight was covered by our local news station, and the link is on the Emberlight Facebook page.

Long goodbye

 I have friends who I spent hours with making pottery.

Yesterday I left off all my potting supplies at the pottery studio. I had double parked, so just dropped the big box at the end of a table, and saw two old friends. But I didn't stay to explain or talk.

I'm not able to relate to these old pottery friends very well. I know they wanted to connect, at least Cindi would have liked to, but I worried about the car.

That's what I told myself.

I also worried about my grieving process. She and I would have ended up in a hug. So why did I just avoid that? Well, probably because these friends were "in the studio only" friends. Never did lunch or coffee with them. Never saw them after I quit (during and after the pandemic until the year I tried going back,) so they only existed in connection with my being there and creating with clay.

We all got to know each other's lives pretty much while talking and dipping glazes, or pushing and pulling clay on a wheel. At a certain level anyway. A good acquaintance-ship. Not really friends. No going home to each other's place.

I felt that way anyway.

But the place did hold many memories...when one spends hours creatively, I felt the emotions of my life coming out in the clay. And then there are the emotions that happen when my created pieces work well, or fail completely. Hours spent in pursuit of beauty, trying to speak the feelings so others could also experience them...and then they might crack, or the glaze run, or someone else's pot explodes and sticks all over a beautiful piece.

So I kept a couple of those failures to remind me of how hopeful I'd been. One is a plate that was fired in the glaze kiln but someone else's piece exploded, and so there's a shard stuck in the middle of the finished plate. I use it under a flower pot. Another is the lid with a painted bee on it, where the teapot had flowing glaze which stuck to the kiln shelf, and had kiln wash stuck all over the foot of it so it was destroyed.

Yes I cried sometimes when something failed.

And I continued to look at several poorly made pieces for many days, months or years, just because I'd thought and worked so hard to have them be beautiful...before finally admitting to myself that they needed to be trashed. When packing my pottery that I'd lived with here on my apartment's shelves, I took a good third of them to the hammer.

I would spend a couple of hours every day the studio was open making something or another. And up till the pandemic it offered at least 2 hours, and sometimes 4 a day that I could go throw, hand-built, or glaze creations in clay. (My blog Alchemy of Clay has lots of my old pottery from then.)

Pottery was a very good way for me to live for 12 years after retirement.

So now I'm letting it all go. Except for the 10 boxes of pottery that are already packed for my next adventure.