The Good that Comes from Grief- Not Drowning but Waving

Bird in Space (1923) - Constantin Brancusi

Over the last six years since Ruby died my grief clarified previously opaque aspects of my personality. My grief has been the ultimate prioritiser, stripping away extraneous chaff and forgettable nonsense, enabling me to focus my energy on more important decisions about the directions I was to take- need I become more exclusive or inclusive, what and who matters to me, how do I feel about my job, what sort of father do I want to be, how much anger and love do I want in my life and so on.
Bereavement has been a unique teacher, presenting me with predetermined lessons about which I have no say but also offering a breadth of options, mostly baffling (as has been written before, there is no way around grief, you have to through it- the key skill is the ability to navigate). Grief is about newness and disorientation, about a seemingly unfathomable depth of loss coupled with a revelatory introspection, about open weeping and quiet contemplation.
I have learned a lot. The arduous psychic work has been more challenging than the previous 39 years of my life combined but where there is endeavour, there is usually reward and this is no less true than of grief. I have gained and learned so much from Ruby's death and I use that knowledge to buoy myself when I am drowning a little. I thank her for not only teaching me so much when she was alive but also after she was alive.
Good can come from grief. But it has taken time- many years, really- to distance myself into an occasional objectivity without disconnecting from my bereavement. One of the many lessons I learnt being a patient in  psychotherapy is that I need not fear being without the pain of grief- painlessness won't sever me from my love of Ruby which means I can then become closer to her, to our relationship, to my love of her and the memories of her.

Here are some good things that have come from Ruby's death in my life:

-I let go. Friendships that were hard work, ones that I nostalgically held onto in case they returned to the early days of carefree fun and excitement, were set free. Ones that mattered less, dissolved. Other friendships remained.
-I love more and respect more. It isn't necessary to display affection for all my clients, patients, friends, family members or strangers but to know they are all part of the same humanity as me with a similar complexity of emotions and drives as me has become a default. How can I now judge someone's decisions when I don't know the choices they had?
-I trust more. My old social worker friend Mary used to say "you don't know if you can trust someone until you trust them". It took Ruby's death for me to fully appreciate the profundity of this statement.
-Image is nothing. I should always be honest (but I need not always be open- some things are private)
-I think about how I want to live and then I live like that. Grief has forced me into a colossal introspective review of myself and my life. And if I am reassessing everything that matters to me- or doesn't- then I have to address some deep basics of what makes me me. Do I want to live in fear, playfully, in connection with others, thinking "what if"? Shall I remain as a Nurse or should I nurse some other way and have a new career? How do feel about my wife and my son? Do I think I am a good person? What type of impact to I want to have in the world- none? Some? What do I care about?
This introspective review has been, and continues to be, deeply valuable to me and affecting to those around me. Actively weighing and considering previously recondite attributes and behaviours is a great effort but is worthwhile and important.
-Most time away from Claire and Tom is wasted time. But some isn't.
-If something is neither beautiful nor useful, get rid of it (as per the ideals of William Morris, designer and social activist)
-Culture is more deeply important to me than I had ever realised and it gives me joy and hope and a humanist bond to the living. Art, literally, saved me. There were paintings and sculptures that threw me a tentative lifeline at the worst times of my grief, that proved I can feel and live and breathe again. And now, six years along, there is art that I understand in a way I was simply unable to before.
For years I loved Michelangelo's sculpture Pieta (Jesus in Mary's arms after crucifixion), for example, but dismissed it as over-religious and disconnected from any experience I could understand as an atheist. Now, though, I see Jesus' emaciated body in death and the almost imperceptible depiction of Mary's acceptance of his death and the strength she may gain from it. She knows it was inevitable and she knows his death is not the end but is, in fact, the beginning of something else. He is weightless not because he is emaciated but because she needs to hold him up (in her eyes and in ours). There are techniques used to maximise the emotiveness (eg. Mary is much larger than Jesus so she can cradle him, their body positions in relation to drapes and seating, Mary is too young, etc) but it is the ability to express these ideas in carved stone that tells me more about Michelangelo's probable lived experiences than his skills as an artist. He understood loss and longing and he knew the importance of iconography and of actions, not empty words.
Similarly I always loved Brancusi's sculptures, particularly his "Bird in Space" created in the 1920's and which I saw many years ago at the Tate Modern in London. It is an imposing 200cm tall majestic, vertical swirl of white marble representing, I used to think, a wingless, featureless bird-like creature flying upwards. It is simple and colourless and beautiful. Shortly after Ruby died I looked at it again, I got lost in its curves for many minutes and I cried with the attachment to humanness it afforded me. I realised what I think Brancusi actually meant by "Bird in Space"- the shape was a representation of the potential movement of a bird, it was meant to convey an abstract idea of a bird or a bird-like thing. It wasn't a sculpture of a bird, it was a sculpture that presented me with questions about potential and kinesis, about volume and space and about my relationship within those limits. Art, literally, saved me.
-I think I am a better nurse. I feel a new sensitivity and a new patience in dealing with particular needs of clients. It should be unsaid that nurses should reflect on their skills of empathy (it is a skill to be honed- it is not true that one either has this quality or one does not) but I have found a new appreciation of the effects of grief or heartache or trauma that I can now understand, as opposed to simply "appreciate" or "empathise with". I don't need to imaginatively place myself in my clients' position to begin to appreciate their loss, I know how my loss feels and can therefore extrapolate to a more nuanced but sophisticated starting point- how do they feel in their position?
-I am less damaging to myself, to others and to the world around me because I think I am less of an arsehole to be around and I don't eat meat or drink alcohol anymore. I am much more environmentally aware, I run, I cycle, I look at trees like friends, I love being in the woods- Ruby's death may have added years to my life.
-One of things I take most seriously is to not be serious. I laugh a lot more and I am sillier. Most things are insignificant, they just don't need to be important, they're just not worth it. Most things are just not worth the stress or effort you think they are.

Pieta (1499) - Michelangelo

Being Present

It is early December and I am getting a little nervous about Christmas. It's a time of year I find quite difficult. Christmas has always made me squirm because its' conspicuous consumerism squares up to my anti-capitalist leanings. But this time of year is also about children's joy and for six Christmases  Ruby has not been here with me to enjoy it. It is my son Tom's birthday early December- he was nine years old last week- which can add to the mix of emotions too. Coupled with a nasty bug I have had for a few days which has stopped me exercising- very unfortunate for runner and cyclist like me- I have been pretty flat in my mood and a little fragile in my coping abilities.
Being as active as I try to be meant that I couldn't simply take time off to rest (I get too fidgety for that) but instead I had to use exercise as therapy somehow. A sore throat and blocked sinuses meant that a jog would be impossible. A lack of motivation meant cycling any worthy distance at any speed was unobtainable. The only type of movement that I knew I was capable of and which was likely to be rewarding enough for a positive effect was something short and tough. There are two options- I could go for a brief and intense mountain bike ride, preferably as muddy as I can get, or a short but mountainous walk.
I decided to walk over Belfast 's Cave Hill- short enough at only 7 km, and intense enough due to the vertical climbs. I could bring my DSLR camera as the sun was out and the views would be beautiful. I packed a sandwich, boots on, camera charged, drove to the car park nearest the summit and walked 2 hours up and down.
I had been feeling mentally untethered recently partly due to a sinus infection that made me feel disconnected from my surroundings and also because of my emotional state in proximity to Christmas. My walk made a huge difference- stretching my legs, heart pumping, fresh oxygen coursing my brain.
But there was more to it than the base somatic experience. It is empirically true that to experience movement and visual pleasure is rewarding, of course, but there was an immersiveness in my environment today that seemed to enable a connection between the ground and myself- an earthing. It helped exclude negative thoughts crowding my mind. It linked me with a sense of immediacy to the ground, to the trees, to the biting wind and the sub-zero air temperatures and by association brought me away from thoughts that were troubling me, that were encouraging me to drift and float away. I was, quite literally, grounded.
I perform the same action- deliberate consideration of my environment- for the same purpose when I wake from a nightmare. To open my eyes fully, to sit up, to reinforce where I am at this precise moment, rooting myself in the here and now. If I remind myself where and when I am I become disconnected from the grasp of the dream world. The same action for the same purpose is performed by a patient of mine who experiences flashbacks due to his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder- when he feels himself beginning to disconnect from his surroundings and his anxiety rise to a panic he eats the most sour, most strong and disgusting sweet he can buy (he has a particular dislike of lemons) and which he always has in his pocket for this exact reason. He is jolted into reality again and pulled away from his imaginary enemy because his sensory experience- the intense flavour- connects him to the present.
It is for this reason why going for a run in extreme weather can sometimes have such a rewarding effect and why sometimes I seek out the strongest wind, the heaviest rain on the darkest night, the tallest trees to run through. During those admittedly questionable endeavours I have little choice but to focus on the path directly in front of me- to not do this would be folly- and as a consequence I observe every detail, I cool with the wind flowing over my head and through my naked toes, I wince at the rain drops stabbing my cheeks, I hear the branches creek and the leaves rustle. I am not just in the run, I am within it.

It is a myth that humans can multi-task. We cannot perform more than one activity at a time that needs our attention (sometimes we can perform one that is automatic alongside, or in rapid succession to, one that is not automatic but this is not the same as multi-tasking). We are evolutionarily hardwired to focus but we rarely use this skill to its full potential. I would do well to recognise the importance of connecting to the present, to concentrate in that very particular way, and use that as a tool of adventure in my internal world and to define the border of what I am. Maybe I could explore thoughts I may not yet know how to think.
I can find ardent depth and profound connectedness from immersing myself in the present. The present wills me to take note of myself, to define the boundaries of my subjective experience and to recognise the relationship I have with my surroundings- the objective world. It reminds me who I am, who I could be and what I am capable of. Immersing myself in the present can provide me a victorious sense of enoughness.
And when I need to be tethered it saves me.