Grief is a story of love, and my story begins like millions of others, as I was going about a happy go lucky life. This life was populated with a husband, kids, family and friends, a colorful succession of beloved dogs and cats and a great gig as a historical romance novelist. (While armed with a mediocre talent, the popularity of the genre kept me published.) Thankfully as a young girl, my mom had given me yoga books to help with my gymnastics and while gymnastics went the way of all things, yoga was forever. Its practice and philosophy sustained me through the tsunami that arrived on the timeline of my life.
In one tumultuous year I first lost my husband John to a sudden and fatal heart attack and eleven months later, our twenty-three-year-old son Jonpaul died of antibiotic-resistant infection (MRSA).
These were the two people I loved most in the world.
The first thing grief does is amplify our love. Attributes multiply and grow in our loved ones’ absence. These days, Jesus has nothing on John and Jonpaul. At first all I could do was write about them. I ended up with a whole book, but if I had to paint a smaller portrait of John and Jonpaul, it might go like this:
John graduated from high school at age 15 and knowing he was not mature enough for college, he lied about his age, joined the Navy and became a search and rescue pilot. John had little interest or inclination in talking about himself, so few people knew this early biographical detail, but it serves as a metaphor for his whole life. John was always saving people. One of the three plane crashes he lived through involved a monsoon, the rescue of dozens of people, and a prolonged scare that turned his brown hair white, as if we needed a visual cue for his wisdom. Every little kid took one look at John’s white hair and beard and big blue eyes, at his large six-foot five-inch frame, and stared in wide-eyed wonder at encountering Santa Claus in real life. John was a popular professor, psychologist and research scientist (over two hundred journal articles). Cloaked in charism, he was also an engaging, at times electrifying speaker and conversationalist. More than any one characteristic, this man I was lucky enough to marry was, hands down, the kindest person I’ve ever met.
Our son Jonpaul was a consummate autodidactic and a speed reader. He loved classical music, literature, physics, astronomy and comedy. Jonpaul not only directed his high school teachers’ book club readings, but even as a hard-core materialist, he took the time to read the Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon, and an eclectic selection of other sacred texts in an admirable and serious attempt to understand people’s religious beliefs. A surprising number of my memories of this kid involve our long walks and mind-bending conversations, discussions frequently interrupted by laughter. Not a normal laughter but a falling over, gasping for breath kind of hilarity.
As I was walking in grief and consumed by its weight, the doors to the spiritual realm opened. One mystical experience followed another. If you’re a skeptic, I get it. John taught the philosophy of science at the graduate level and back then, if I had heard someone describing the supernatural experiences that piled up after John and Jonpaul’s passing, I would have thought, “Wow, she needs some time on the couch.” I also understand that this might seem like a predictable psychological phenomenon—a grieving wife and mom discovers that we do not go kaput at the end of our life’s sentence—but throughout time, grief has connected people to our greater reality.
When people begin exploring metaphysics and contemplating the meaning and depth of the idea that Mother Earth, our physical plane and all its magnificent mind-boggling complexities, exists inside of the enormously more complex spiritual realm, they eventually realize that the Beatles were right all along. Love is all you need. Indeed, it makes the world go round; it is the rhyme and reason for existence. (Sometimes cliches are right as rain.) I began studying and eventually teaching pranayama and Metta-meditation (loving kindness meditation). To this day it is the only thing that makes sense in our crazy world.
Grief is a near universal experience. It shows up on everyone’s timeline. To help navigate this passage, I developed a simple but poignant meditation that connects us back to love.
Begin with ten minutes of mindful breathing. Conscious breathing offers many of the same physical benefits of exercise, but it also has many spiritual benefits. For our purpose, it settles and quiets your mind, alerting you to a shift in awareness.
Close your eyes.
Remember a time when your love for them overwhelmed you. Relive this memory.
Now remember the time you felt the most love from this person. Relive this memory.
Picture your loved one in your mind’s eye. See them as their best, truest self.
Imagine your love as a glittering white light cascading over them. Picture their face upturned and joyful as this happens.
Tell them you love them, how very much you miss them.
Share anything from your life you need to share.
Imagine you are embracing them.
Grief, you see, is a teacher bearing gifts. It arrives to show us how big our love is. And with just a little imagination, we discover that this love is still very much here.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
