Gratitude in the Face of Grief

Grief has been my landscape the past few months. Since my dad passed away in September, my life has been one of negotiating this new terrain. And while there have been bubbling brooks and crested mountains, they’re often in the background.

The foreground is generally quietness – the stillness of a foggy morning in its otherworldliness.

Nothing to be Grateful for – Except Everything

In many ways, I feel how easy it could be to think I don’t have much to be grateful for this year. But, oddly, I find it very hard to go to that place. This experience hasn’t been what I expected at all (although, to be honest, I’m not sure what I expected).

As I’m sure you won’t find surprising, I’m a big-time journaler. I got back into this practice (and it surely is one!) a few years ago, and I’ve been pretty well keeping up with it ever since. I don’t always journal every day, especially if I’m traveling, but I do it more days than not. I pretty quickly added a gratitude component to my journaling, and every evening I list three things I’m grateful for. Even on the hardest days, I don’t find it challenging to find three things to list. Like grief, gratitude is a landscape – once you’re in it, it’s hard to see anything else.

Fresh Eyes

This Thanksgiving has me approaching my life with a new perspective – a blend of grief and gratitude that is nestling deep into my bones as a sharper vision for my life, more trusted intuition and an ability to see where my life leads me with a balance of moving forward and thoughtfulness.

This year, my Thanksgiving gratitude list is filled of what I never expected, but I think it’s my most transformative list ever (incomplete though it surely is):

• Hospital caregivers who are thoughtful, compassionate and empathetic.
• Hearing from people across the rainbow of my life until now – the friends, family, coworkers, neighbors and more who reached out after my dad died.
• The community surrounding my mom, supporting her close-up while my sister and I live far away.
• The many people who have shared their stories of loss with me.
• Having had many living will conversations with my family over the years, way before any of us got sick. If you haven’t had this convo with your loved ones, I strongly encourage you to do so.
• Being able to reach out in grief and love to my three friends who have lost dads since I lost mine.
• One of my friends who shared the most spot-on, freeing advice, which he received after he lost his mom: “It’s going to be awful.”
• My mom, sister and I being on the same page.
• The ability to bear witness to others’ grief – to let them cry or talk or whatever without feeling like I have to “fix” them.
• Having built enough of a semblance of a self-care practice and support network that I’ve been able to work with healing instead of falling straight into a hole.
• My jobs changing suddenly, right when I needed them to.
• Space, time and bubble baths.
• Text support from my wonderful friends — who texted me throughout, reminding me how much I’m loved.
• A wonderful yoga teacher here in town who reached out to me, telling me how hard it was for her to return to her yoga practice after her dad died. She told me I could come to her class, do a few poses, and walk right back out if I didn’t feel up to it.
• The ability to be vulnerable.
• Forging deeper relationships with many people in my life, including connecting with new friends who have been on this path.
• My dad’s gift for words – and using what he passed on to me to give his eulogy.
• My family being willing to find our way forward in our new family roles, however bumbling we may be at times.
• My husband pulling over on the side of the road to let me cry hysterically to him on the phone hours before my dad passed.
• Being able to spend my dad’s last few days with him, telling him everything I wanted, and the gift of knowing, at the very last minute, that he’d heard me.
• Holding my dad’s hand, looking at him, telling him how much I loved him when he took his last breath.
• Knowing, without a doubt, that intuition is real and connection is deep.
• Living into the mystery.
• Changing my mind at the last minute and going on a vacation with my family this summer – and the rocking chair time I spent with my dad.
• The friends who were with me every step of the way – and still are.
• Letting go while holding on.
• Realizing how dramatically my life has changed and how, in many ways, it’s just become manifest.

Most of all? I’m thankful that I can hold gratitude and grief together. And this is really the yoga, isn’t it? Our ability to approach life with any semblance of openness and equanimity starts on the yoga mat and then radiates out.

Better add that to the list.

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