Joy will come

This arrived as an email subject heading today in my inbox and I figure it’s as good a statement on the nature of life as any other. Later on I spoke on the phone with the sender of the email and we talked about life, death, love, loss and laughter. We did some philosophizing on life and while not particularly highbrow or complex, we came up with the fact that sometimes life is shit, but it’s about making sure we’re walking through the shit together. I think this is really the crux of the idea for me today, that it’s important we walk side by side and that we hold close the idea that at some point, joy will come.

I’ve just finished Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly and while I normally shy away from people who have a background in social work (too much navel gazing for me normally), I’ve become a total fan girl of Brown. If you haven’t heard of her you can check her out in this TED talk http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

On my desk at work I have a post-it from Schulte that reads ‘one has to stand in one’s vulnerability in order for it to become a strength’. This has been a concept that I’ve drawn on in my career as an educator and something I talk to pre-service teachers about too, particularly when we have crunchy moments in our practice or in our relationships with students, teachers and colleagues.

One of the key things I like about Brown’s work though is the idea that while vulnerability can be challenging, uncomfortable and difficult it is also the birthplace of joy, life and learning. Vulnerability means being open to the shit times, not running away from them, or running away from our friends and families who are having them, but being there, by their side as they go through the shit. My friend ended our conversation by saying ‘thanks for walking through the shit with me’. 

And this is what matters.

So while we wait for her shit times to pass, we’re looking at finding joy in the everyday simplicity of life. The way the sun streams down through the clouds, the refraction of light and the muting of colours as day turns to dusk. The moment as Ethan Hawke says in Reality Bites, when a ‘laugh becomes a cackle’. The sound of birds outside as night turns to day. The laughter of a small child. The sound of an old friend’s voice on the phone. The smell of freshly baked bread and the crunch of the crust as you bite into it. The warm embrace of a loved one. The sound of a song you haven’t heard for ages on the stereo. Getting dragged through the grass near the creek as the dog wags her tail in excitement. All these and more are the simple moments of joy. 

So my friend, as always, is right, shit as her time may be right now, joy will come.

None of us can leave here today unchanged

-->

A mourner, holding herself upright, stands and speaks passionately with love about the husband she is here to farewell. In doing so, she honours his life, their love and his memory. Soon, she leads a procession of walkers, following the hearse as it moves out of the churchyard. I look at her walking behind the grey hearse while sun streams down and tears catch in my throat, the beginning of a loud, uncontrolled keening that I swallow.  In the church hall, she hugs others, and as is typical of her, inquires if they are okay, laughs at their memories and wipes tears away when old friends envelop her in a hug. At the cemetery, they say ‘The Irish bury their dead and today we are here to bury our dead’ and she picks up a shovel and is the first to begin. Like a working bee for death, others join in, a mother, sisters, friends, they all take a turn and what at first seemed heartbreakingly grim becomes a tribute to the dead, with the living doing their duty and saying goodbye.

When finished, the priest says ‘None of us can leave here today unchanged.’

In my minds eye these moments are like stills from a distant and foreign time when people grieved differently.  There were moments when this day was tough, moments when it was uncomfortable, moments when there was a loud and open lamentation for both life and death. I’m fascinated by grief, fascinated by the way that we in contemporary society think we can outrun it, can outsource it, can outplay the reality that with life comes loss, and with loss comes grief.

In the funeral booklet it reads ‘To love someone is to risk the pain of parting. Not to love is never to have lived. The grief which we now experience is the honouring of that love’.  The words resonate deep within me. In the days that have passed since our friend died, I’ve wondered about life, love and loss. I’ve wanted to run at the sea and scream into the roar of the ocean at the unfair nature of life, at my friend finding herself a widow at 39, with a small, beautiful child by her side. I’ve felt flashes of pain as I think of never being able to again enjoy the witty humour, passionate mind and beautiful voice of our dear friend MK. In the church, the words from the booklet thrum through my brain and I begin to realize that today, hard as it is, is the honouring of the love we feel for MK.

There is no escape from the grief that I feel for him, for Carla, for Ailish. There is however, a charting of his journey, of the way that he touched all of our lives and the way he will continue to do so. In writing of my memories of MK, I wrote that I always walked away from him, feeling better about the world. In celebrating his life, I see that this feeling was not unique, and was in fact a quality that every single one of the people spilling out of the church knew, recognized and loved about him. In leaving his funeral today, he has made me feel better about the world and instilled in me a desire to be a better person, to make the choice to speak well of people rather than to waste words with meanness.

I like to think of grief as an ocean, a sea that surrounds us. We cannot live without it, yet there are times we do not wish to swim out into its depths. There are times when it is calm and still, we see it around us, but its waves do not touch our shores. Other times, grief, batters us, rolling down wave after wave until we feel swamped and wonder if we will be able to stay afloat. In time, the sea stills, the waves break into gentle ripples, the sky clears and it seems as if all is well once more.

****************************

Today, over a week and half later the sun is again streaming down and I’m heading off to vote. I’m thinking of MK as I do this, knowing how passionately he felt about politics and knowing that he would want each of us to make our vote count today. So today, when we use our voices to vote, when we think of the kind of world we want to live in, I’m thinking that I want it to be a world in which people treat each other with kindness and gentleness.

The ripples touch the shore and hope lies within them.