I’m reading "Faith, Hope, and Carnage" by Sean O'Hagan. He interviewed Nick Cave the musician who's band The Bad Seeds is featured in the Peeky Blinders TV series. Cave is also a writer, film, poet, and more. These interviews were deeply touching on so many levels. I'm not even that far into the book. His discussion of grief is so enlightening. Learning more will be a treat.
Cave's quote below about grief matches what I've always believed, my grief wound let light in. I learned more. Felt more. Became more of who Donna loved into being. More of who I was even if I denied it. Cave uses words like, altered or remade or transformative. When we begin to experience the world again. Even in the briefest moments we find our vulnerability has changed. We've become acutely aware of others. We recognize their pain. We listen without judgement. We become more human. All of this while struggling with the pain of our grief.
I've experienced all of that and more. Writing the memoir. Actively volunteering at hospice. Training to be a volunteer crisis counselor. Presenting suicide prevention lectures with organizations advocating for mental health and suicide prevention. Previously I thought all of this was done to find meaning and purpose. Of course meaning and purpose was an outcome. After reading Cave's quote below. I saw more of what Donna's death exposed me too. My vulnerability was laid bare. I became more aware of not just me but others. Others are the connection to my humanity. Others are where I can give of myself.
My grief drew me closer to the world that Cave describes. I see that now. Actually I've half believed I was the me that Donna loved into being while she was alive. The me bloomed after her death. Her death was transformative. Reading this now I missed the truth of these changes. I focused on the changes only to regard them as a slight to Donna. This new better me will never benefit Donna. She was gone I was alive. What I am now has no benefit to the dead. That's the failure I carry. I'm here. She is there. All I can do it memorialize her outwardly and inwardly. Never again to demonstrate to her I'm more the person she loved into being.
All my writing and carrying Donna's legacy forward. Sharing her. I believed Donna wanted this pushing of her legacy. That was my magical thinking. I was doing all of this for her since she was not here to feel my presence and care. It was my guilt for letting her die. Not saving her life. In this moment of harsh reflection I wonder, what did I want for me? I was not selfless in my sharing Donna. Previously my doubts about me were where I drew energy. Wanted to challenge those doubts. Wanted to show Donna I could. Right now my doubts are sink holes that have frozen me in time. In the amber of magical thinking.
"That perhaps grief can be seen as a kind of exalted state where the person who is grieving is the closest they will ever be to the fundamental essence of things because in grief you become deeply acquainted with the idea of human mortality, you go to a very dark place and experience the extremities of your own pain You are taken to the very limit of suffering as far as I can see there is a transformative aspect to this place and suffering, we are essentially altered or remade by it now this process is terrifying but in time you returned to the world with some kind of knowledge that is something to do with our vulnerability as participants in this human drama everything seems so fragile and precious and heightened in the world and the people in it seems so endangered and yet so beautiful to me. It feels that in this dark place the idea of a God feels more present or maybe more essential. It actually feels like grief and God or somehow intertwined. It feels that in grief it feels that in grief you were drawn closer to the veil that separates this world from the next I allow myself to believe such things because it is good for me to do so"