Wednesday was the last session of Writing to Heal. I miss it already. Facilitated through Visiting Nurse & Hospice Care of Santa Barbara, the class has given me time and space to look at grief that has been piling up. It is natural that as I age, more and more mentors, family, heroes, friends, and authority figures are leaving this phase of their existence.
I’ve been grateful, especially in later life, to one of my teacher-mentors, Steven Crain. He insisted in Jr. High School that we memorize No Man is an Island, by John Donne.
‘No Man is an Island’
MEDITATION XVII
No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
John Donne
Historical meditations give me a way to think about death as a consistent part of human existence. As a result, I don’t find death unnatural or terrifying, just sad. And in the last few years, too sad.
For decades, with each big media-reported death, I’ve found myself repeating this poem in my head. I didn’t know Robin Williams, but I loved his work. All kinds of bells ringing in my mind. Osama Bin Laden was probably a terrible human by many measures, but I recited the poem and knew that he was doing what felt right for him in his life. Low, distant bells. My special, childish relationship with my aunt, because her birthday was just a few days before mine, had been broken years before she died, yet there was solace as my beloved mission bells tolled quietly in my mind.
The older I’ve become, the bigger and closer the bells come. The first safe person I ever spoke to about being abused died and I never knew he was sick. There was no goodbye, no goodbye, no goodbye…BONG, BONG, BONG constantly in my head.
Then my mother-in-law passed. Then my father. Then my mother. In the process of losing my mom, my sibling and many family members are out of my life. A necessary sadness of incomprehensible size.
RINGTINGPINGPONGDINGDONGBONGBONGBONG!!!!
Now sometimes grief seizes me, stranding me hundreds of feet in the air, on the edge of an open bell tower. It is only as wide as a retaining wall; no railing, no earplugs. A 1000 ton bell rings so loudly that my entire being aches with each overlapping, never ending strike. I have to remain perfectly still or the bells will knock me to the stone paving below. The vibration is pain so intense in every part of my body that it is impossible to want anything but unconsciousness.
Eventually, the bells stop and exhaustion remains.
This felt too hard to continue to endure, so I sought help from group grief counseling, individual therapy, and the Writing to Heal class.
The class relied heavily on modern poetry as a prompt to write about loss and grief. Poetry by Raymond Carver, Pat Schneider, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jane Kenyon, and Terry Tempest Williams. Beautiful poems, about sickness and loved ones writing and simple everyday things.
Class was about making a little bit of time to play the bells on my terms. Sometimes they rang softly as if from across town, helping me appreciate my life. And sometimes they crash, thunderous in the room where we write, causing painful tears, pushing out difficult words, thoughts, and feelings onto the page.
I feel exhausted after writing class too.
But also better.
This is life.
This is ‘older.’
Time for the soft chiming of the bells. Time for the brutal pressure of sound waves. Time for managing how, when, and where the bells effect me.
Over the next few posts, I will share some snippets from class, starting with a daily exercise I really enjoy. I recommend it for any writer who needs to get in touch with where they are when they sit down to work:
“Today I Write….”
Today I write to continue my journey. To commit myself to a future life that has fewer ambushing tears; fewer regrets; fewer moments of anxiety. Today I write despite my busy-ness and alongside my hunger–Dang, I want lunch. Today I write because writing is worth braving the traffic. Getting to writing class is worth city block after city block, stop sign after stop sign of that smell. That smell of being stuck behind a massive diesel truck, almost tipping, completely overloaded with porta potties.
– Today I Write, 4/10/19
What do you think?