An Inward Turn
Cultivating Patience
Despite renewed commitments, local involvements, visits and calls with folks who care about me, and other sources of solace, lately I have been taking an inward turn. Although as previously mentioned I don’t like to talk about myself much, after twenty-five years of blogging and the loss of my dear Elisa three months ago I am finding it helpful at times to use this weblog as something more like a diary, so I’ll attempt to describe what’s going on in my head and my heart.
The outward signs are clear enough: I’ve been ignoring news of the wider world even more than usual, immersing myself in the eternities (e.g., going deep into the writing of my Aristotle book), listening to highly contemplative music (Bach’s Art of the Fugue, Palestrina’s Canticum Canticorum, John Downland’s lute music, Gabriel Fauré’s piano music), and therapeutically pouring my emotions into playing guitar (specifically a beautiful old Martin D-28 that I recently purchased from a friend).
The inward signs are more subtle. Maybe the recent rainy (and tonight snowy) weather has seeped into my soul, but I have this vague bodily sense that things are off. My feelings are closer to the surface. It’s been harder to maintain my emotional equilibrium. Sadness often comes unbidden in moments of quiet. The noisy world is too much with me and I strive to avoid it. As difficult thoughts and feelings occupy my mind, the best I can do is simply sit with them. I’m not solving problems or working through impasses in any obvious way, just being.
I suppose these experiences represent yet another variety of grieving that will manifest itself, perhaps along with many others, during what I foresee will be a long process of coming to understand and adjust to Elisa’s passing. In the meantime I’m working to cultivate, to the extent I can, a stance of profound patience.
Lovely and insightful. Thank you.
My mom told me that the loss of a loved one is like a high amputation–the loss of a limb–and the body responds physiologically to grief as it tries to make sense of what happened. Healing is physical, not just emotionally and spiritual. I agree with her.
Meanwhile, this is my favorite author regarding grieving. His work supplants the Kubler-Ross model, in my opinion, which is often misquoted.
“Each person’s grief is like all other people’s grief;
each person’s grief is like some other person’s grief;
and each person’s grief is like no other person’s grief.”
~ J. William Worden. Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy, Fifth Edition.
Applies to many personal issues.
BTW, Brahms is who I turn to for solace.
I'm reminded of a beautiful and thoughtful book about loss and its relationship to creativity: "Henry Clay Frick: An Intimate Portrait", by Martha Frick Symington Sanger, who wrote: "... the eternal question. Had Frick not fallen into protracted mourning would he have created the Frick Collection? Or if he had resolved his grief, how would the Collection he created have differed? Creativity, I believe, is often the antidote for protracted pain and longing."