The griefs that I have experienced have been like Hurricane Ian. After the death of our daughter, the landscape for our family changed permanently. She was still three when the fatal diagnosis came to us; she turned four with the noose around her neck. And the hopes and dreams of our family were demolished.
Lest this sound overly dramatic, no one loses a small child without deep and prolonged grief and a legacy of trauma. St. Jude’s is the place where no parent wants to be told to go. Yet after she was diagnosed, that is where we ended up.
When her father was also diagnosed with a fatal cancer, the trauma came to life again. If you are tired of hearing me write about this, I still feel the need to get it down in words on occasion.
We began as a family of four, then three and now the two of us that are left. Ours is a quiet life punctuated with small pleasures. Nothing big or stressful for me; I am happy with the day-to-day.
I have always been interested in spirituality and have studied and practiced deeply. The essays arise spontaneously and I seldom change anything about them. They are the scars turned into stars, as the saying tritely goes.
I favor simplicity and speed when I write. An essay seldom takes over five minutes to write; that is a sign that they are part of me. I dislike dry dissertations of awakening, as my interest in the subject is not technical.
Life is huge but the living of it is small, like these essays. If one bites off more than he or she can chew, something is lost. So I keep it simple, always simple.
Hurricane Ian has changed thousands of lives in an instant, yet the recovery process will be excruciatingly slow.
Love is in charge of it all. Somehow the big things arise in the smallest things. A little child lost to cancer, an entire home demolished in Ian—life must and should go on. But the losses will have to be experienced and that is where love comes in.
Unwittingly we place God outside of ourselves when all arises from within. As a result of my family’s losses, I am obsessive about studying life. Sometimes it feels like grief is a glacial process that one can only take so much of. I turn to TV and crossword puzzles when my mind needs a rest. The heart, though, never sleeps. It has its own memory and schedule and we would be advised to honor its way of healing us.
“This above all, to thine own self be true,” is the mantra of the heart. I bow low before it lest I dishonor love.
Vicki Woodyard