Reflections on grief : Roman Romanyshyn

In the darkest moments of my grief and mourning, I could not have dreamed that out of grief I would be called back into life through love and that I would experience this love as an enlargement of my being.  It is true that we grieve because we have dared to love.  But it is also true that we love because we have learned how to grieve.  The love that springs anew from grief is more free of fear than love which has not yet been tempered by loss, and in its embrace we recover our citizenship of the cosmos…..

(the) ripe fruit of the mourning process, allows us to appreciate that we all belong to the same fabric of being, that we are all held in the hands of that supreme mystery of love, and that we are all cradled in eros as the force which pervades all creation.  These moments which flower from grief are truly life giving.  They are also unexpected, like a gift, and linger only for a short time.  But for their appearance and presence I have been grateful.

To go willingly and knowingly into that place where we submit to the grieving process is a difficult challenge.  It is made even more difficult by the fact that we do not have many, if any, cultural supports for this invitation to yield to grief and its sorrows.  The pain and sorrow of grief are so devastating that we prefer to get over them as quickly as possible.  In place of surrendering into the expereince, we prefer to have the information which would take us past it.  In place of being with the grief, we prefer to know what to do about it.

The winter of my soul in grief, however, like the winter of the world, simply was what it was, prior to and always apart from whatever meanings I wished to ascribe to or draw from it, and apart from whatever I wished to do about it.  Whatever sense I wanted to make of my wife’s death, the force of grief which stormed my soul had its own way.   Grief was a tempest which blew apart the fiction of my well ordered and meaningful life…..

To be in accord with its rhythm required of me a sense of patience, an ability to wait, a tolerance for the idle houir when I was able to let go of my purposes and intentions.  From the outside, this process, which lasted about two years, often looked like wasted time.  But for the soul it was a time of hibernation when the frayed edges and wor fabric of my being.

(the reverie of grief)….asks for a curb on that impatience which, as part of our techno-consumer culture, seeks the quick fix for whatever is broken or the easy remedy for whatever is ill.   In the tone and style of reverie, this book commits itself to the belief that the grieving soul hungers for the experience of mourning and that in the winter of the soul knowledge about loss is not enough.  In grief’s far country, I was not nourished by explanation.  In the long term winter night I yearned only for the vignettes and stories that witnessed my experience of loss and echoed its collective depths.

Reading these beautiful words that comprise part of the first chapter of Romanyshyn’s book The Soul in Grief was so affirming and calming to my soul today.  He articulates so clearly that grief takes us to a profoundly wordless place where it is hard to make meaning or have another’s meaning imposed on our experience.  This is why being fed platitudes in our grief is so disturbing to us while we are undergoing grief.  We know such platitudes are in some way a betrayal and denial of the deeper and deepening experience we undergo when we grieve.

Reading Robert’s words reminded me of my own deep winter stretching from 2004 onwards following my separation from my husband.  Although my husband didnt die, he did decide to leave me, due to the fact I was in unresolved grief.  With his leaving the world I had known and built with him over 11 years shattered and dissolved and I can see now that is what happened.  When I was caught deep in the midst of the process I did not see it, but I see how in later years I have pathologised the way I responded which was to retreat and then seek healing in a place deep with mythological resonances, Glastonbury.  I feel sad that after only a short time I aborted that place to come back here to Australia thinking mistakenly that I ‘needed to put things back together’.  I had my accident in the midst of this and an astrologer who met with me following it tried to encourage me on an inner pathway of being with a deepening into my soul.  But apart from that brief meeting I had no comfirmation from the outside world only people telling me I was doing the wrong thing and on the wrong path.  Its only in the latest months when I have fully allowed the mourning and tears to fall that I have fully realised the depth of the many losses I underwent in my life over 40 years.  And its so wonderful to have such beautiful affirming confirmation of a deepening grief process by one who has undergone it and can write so hauntingly and eloquently about it.  I will be sharing more from Romanyshn’s book over following days and weeks.

I hope reading it will be affirming for fellow bloggers.  It truly is an inspiring and most poetic gift to those who are also undergoing loss.  On that path we need those vignettes and witnesses who have passed along the dark passage way of grief and returned with wisdom to give and deep soul insights to share.