When my son, Joshua, died in a car accident at the age of eighteen, it felt more traumatic and painful than facing my own death. Although I was a close student of the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, I had no conscious understanding that I’d received any training adequate to see me through this horrific loss.
Yet part of my longtime daily practice was the contemplation of impermanence and death. Immediately upon receiving the news of Josh’s passing, the practice verses echoed in my mind: “Joyful to have such a human birth…. But death is real and comes without warning. This body will be a corpse.” This contemplation is earthy, elemental, and demanding of barebones honesty. It soaked into my mind just as the soil is nurtured by water and sunlight. Immersed in grief, my unconscious default became maintaining a mind of stability and presence.
Each day was a wild ride as grief weaved between feelings of gratitude and sorrow, appreciation and pain, yet always with an undercurrent of excruciating maternal love.
The journey of grief cannot be measured against any calendar. Time for the bereaved is irrelevant except for the painful fact that at one time your loved one was alive, and now they’re gone. The thin line that separates life and death appears so tenuous yet so final, like a door slammed shut and locked. The one we loved so dearly is frozen in time, while we continue to age and grow.
Each journey through grief is unique, yet we all share at least one common thread: In every moment we’re looking for our footing. There are always surprises. We can suddenly have moments of deafening silence and sorrow, then brief seconds of joy or humor. All belong.
You may ask yourself how you can possibly live with your grief and keep on participating in day-to-day activities. It may feel like the grief will destroy you. But it hasn’t. You’re alive. You’re here. It’s self-defeating to be fearful of your grief. You can’t outrun it. Allow your emotions to arise, let them rest in grief’s vast space, and experience whatever arises without judgment.
Intellectually, it’s easy to understand impermanence. Nothing lasts forever. Seasons change; day turns into night; thoughts arise and fall away; flowers fade; life is finite. But when the death of a loved one happens, it takes all of your courage to live in the midst of your grief. Your body may feel heavy and simultaneously empty and hollow. You may have little appetite and feel far more exhausted than you’ve ever been. You may feel uncontrollably sad, angry, isolated, guilty, or lonely. Sensory experiences may have shifted. Your taste may be more acute, touch more sensitive, sight more vivid, sound and smell more penetrating. Alternatively, maybe your senses feel numb, muted, or nonexistent. Approach the state of your body with loving care.
As much as it feels bizarre and impossible to do, taking care of yourself is the kindest act you can perform. By doing so, you may be able to attend to the grief your family members are experiencing. Trauma lives in the body, so whether it’s through walking, yoga, exercise, hiking, or gardening, movement helps absorb your loss.
Spending time in nature and observing the change of seasons can awaken greater clarity. We too experience periods of growth, fruition, decay, rest, and renewal. The force of nature, with its sudden, sometimes destructive upheavals, can bring you back again and again to the reality of change: That which is born dies.
Although grief is a personal journey, spending time with close friends can encourage you to open further, to say out loud what was silent within your mind. However, in your sorrow, you may instinctively withdraw from some social gatherings. You need not question the intelligence of such a decision. Creating certain boundaries may be helpful and healthy during the early stages of grief. And alas, as much as you protect your tender heart, uncomfortable moments will arise with others. People may say things that feel insensitive or thoughtless. This can be an opportunity to practice kindness toward yourself and the other person. They mean well—they just don’t know how to express their kind intentions.
In the empty silence of your grief, there may be a time when you feel drawn to writing. Journaling can offer you an opportunity for contemplation and reflection. Expressing your grief in words allows you to lean further into your pain without becoming imprisoned or paralyzed by it.
In the midst of grief, you are inevitably faced with a challenge. How, in the midst of grieving, can you face your pain with gentleness and compassion? How do you rouse the energy to be open and strong enough to be present for your partner, or your surviving child or children? How can you reenter the world? One practice that can help is loving-kindness. With loving-kindness, you can actually use your grief as an antidote to your suffering.
To practice loving-kindness, take a seat and feel the embrace and support of the earth beneath you and the vastness of the sky above. Take note of your body, your posture, and your breath. Sit without judgment. Don’t worry if you’re doing everything correctly. Just feel the ongoing rhythm of your breathing.
Once settled, breathe in the weight of your grief. With each intake of breath, feel it throughout your entire body, every pore. Feel the sadness, shock, pain, and emptiness of your grief penetrating your every organ, your mind and heart.
Then with your exhale, send out compassion, warmth, and kindness. Let that soothing love embrace your pain. The more of your grief that you take in, the more loving-kindness embraces you.
Now think of your loved one who died. With each inhale, feel the love, pain, confusion, and fear that your precious loved one may have felt as they were dying. With each exhale, send out warmth and loving-kindness with the wish that they be relieved of their confusion. You’re helping your loved one be released from their now former life.
Finally, expand the practice as far as you can. With every inhale, breathe in the sorrow and confusion of all who have died and for all the wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends left behind to grieve. Exhaling, expand out as far as you can with your offer of love and comfort. What started as a personal practice now becomes a wide-open, generous loving-kindness practice for all beings. We’re a global community, sharing our birthright of life and death. The practice of loving-kindness gives us an opportunity to see ourselves and others with greater clarity and compassion.
If we live long enough, we will experience loss and grief countless times. Grief shows us the truth of impermanence in the most personal and brutal way. It also transforms us. Our sorrow and pain can slowly change into an appreciation for the preciousness of life and a deepening experience of joy.
Joy and sorrow are inseparable. Life is precious and finite. Grief embraces all of this.
