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