Grief Unforeseen

The narrow road turned to dirt and began climbing up along the brook, just flowing now in the spring thaw, into the Worcester Mountains. We hadn't been here for several years, and took a wrong turn before backtracking and heading up Mick's road, through the stand of tall bare-trunked pines still standing in deep snow, fast through the deep mud-season ruts where ice and earth fought for our lurching tires, up onto the flat by the garden and the barn where Beau and Belle, the pair of handsome Percherons, waited for their dinner. Cascading down from a spring near the woods, a smaller stream sang like glass bells as we walked in the warm sun up to the house, the last of two on this road.

We were late; all the other guests at the baby shower had eaten homemade gingerbread and cheesecake and ham and soft white rolls already and were seated in the living room around the black woodstove, watching the couple open presents. It had been eight or nine years since we'd last seen the mother-to-be, and almost thirty since I'd met her for the first time, being breast-fed at the kitchen table by her own mother, whose house this was now. Mother, two daughters, and a son all rose from their seats to put their arms around us, and the afternoon light poured onto the pasture outside the window and onto the wooden floor of the hand-built house, the back of the rocking chair, the braided rug, the quilt of colored squares on the kitchen wall. The guests, mostly unknown to me, were silhouettes against the bright white light, nearly strong enough to erase the memories of hardship and tragedy that filled my eyes over and over as I watched each card being carefully read, acknowledged, set on a table; the eyes cast around the room to search out and thank the generous giver; the rustlings of tissue paper as each gift was opened and appreciated. Afterward the other guests drifted away; we stood and talked in the kitchen while the mother kneaded the communion bread for the village church on a yellow-checked oilcloth, then sat with the children on the couch as they told us the latest stories of their lives: some happy, some a continuation of difficulties that began long ago.

We left while it was still light and drove south to our home. The snow was finally gone from the garden, and in the dusk I noticed the white heads of snowdrops pushing through the dry leaves. We unpacked, drank a glass of wine, ate a simple supper, slept.

In the night I woke, disturbed by dreams. There were stars, blurry to my nearsighted eyes, in a clear dark sky. I climbed back into bed, slept again, and in the morning woke utterly lost, heartbroken by the terrible relentless beauty of the spring: the ability of the grass to resurrect itself, the mating-calls of the cardinals, the sleek grey breasts of the pair of juncos hopping unscathed between the thorny red canes at the base of the wild roses. I rushed down the stairs, pulled a coat off the rack, flung myself into the garden and stood over the patch of snowdrops -- dug from my grandmother's garden where I had picked them as first bouquet of the year with my mother since I was old enough to walk -- and wept and wept as if over a grave.

So grief, as she will, had her way with me, like a rag flung up into the trees by the gusts of a sudden storm to be tossed and rent and then left limp and bleached and drying in the clean, calm sun of the morning. And then I floated down again, slow and spent, to where my legs and voice were waiting.

Comments

[marja-leena]

(o)

[Natalie]

And (o) again. What a beautiful post to usher April in, Beth, sadness and joy interwoven so deeply that it's impossible to pull them apart.

[Bill]

I hate to comment on how well grief becomes you, or how its dark scrawl brightens the snowdrop; the light in house which you visited...it seems too private!

Swedish symbolist/realist sculptor Per Hasselberg saw a snowdrop by the Siene and was moved to personify it with a sculpture of a young woman bound about her ribs with a fillet, a last petal on a flower beginning to mature into seed. The most tender feelings of symbolist/realist sculptor in spring in Paris had nowwhere else to go but into the landscape of human form, the smoother skinned the better. But what a lot of work followed that first moment of inspiration before a flower! I hope your snowbell bodes for you a year of productive creativity.

http://www.konstmuseum.goteborg.se/prod/kultur/konstmuseet/dalis2.nsf/535e371e7fd657aec1256a5c0045675f/096f2e62935b1b5dc1256fe4002e5a24!OpenDocument

[beth]

Thank you, Marja-Leena, Natalie: I'm glad if that mixture of emotions came across.

Bill, on the contrary! I'm so grateful for your comment and the story about Per Hasselberg, totally unfamiliar to me! I wouldn't write these things if I didn't want people to react, comment, share their own experience -- and am always mystified when they don't. Perhaps you explain why here; maybe it all seems too private, self-contained, and also already processed and packaged and expressed...?

[Pica]

Beth -- this is beautiful. Thank you.

[Bill]

No, I think it is precisely the processing and packaging you do with your material which makes it available to comment.

[beth]

Thanks, Pica. And you've seen the garden, so you can put yourself there! Today it's grey and rainy, and the cardinals have been going nuts, calling and calling, and there is a whole flock of redwing blackbirds high in the trees.

Bill - hmm - I guess it depends on the reader, then. Maybe someone else will say something about this. I've noticed that sometimes the more time I spend on a post (not necessarily this one) the fewer comments it receives, regardless of subject matter. I think this is true for some other writers I read, too. Then I wonder -- is it intimidating? too finished? Does it seem like I have everything figured out, because who does? I certainly don't!!

[MB]

Grief and joy and hope and pain, all colors intermingling, and ultimately, beautiful.

[dale]

(o)

Dear Beth.

[Teju]

Thank you for expressing, through what is happening in your own life, some of what is happening in mine. The unspeakable grief of living, the unfathomable (and, as you say, terrible relentless) beauty in the world.

It's a mystery that we can stand it for even an hour, not to mention day after day after day. But stand it we do.

[Jean]

Beth, this is one of those pieces that remind me how reading blogs sometimes gives me a unique apprehension of other consciousnesses around the world, gentle, confused, like-minded, often better than me, but showing me what we have in common, making me feel less alone. The part of others we need to see - well I do anyway - but which in the rush and competitiveness of much daily life we often don't show each other. Thank you.

And, yes, I certainly experience what you describe - when I work hard on expressing something interesting I often get few or no comments. Whereas something trivial will get more and something self-pitying (not that I regret the odd one like that, it's often good to get it out of my system!) will get a lot more. Best not to draw any conclusions from this, but it's hard not to.

[EMS]

it's trillium for me, not snow drops. trillium and spring beauties,the little pale violet flowers that used to cover the space between our parent's lawns.

[Dave]

The best posts leave me with little to say. Sometimes I leave a short note to the effect of "I really liked this"; sometimes (as here) I merely paste an excerpt into my Smorgasblog so others will come and read. I find myself saving my commenting energy for struggling writers, bloggers with too few readers, and others who seem as if they would most benefit from encouragement - a form of triage. (When you read close to 120 blogs, you can't comment on everything!)

[beth]

MB, Dale - thank you.

Teju - actually, I don't think most people feel this way! Or if they do, they aren't as acutely aware of it. For me, it's not the beauty alone, but the beauty in spite of. It helps me enormously to have even a few fellow emotional travelers.

EMS - well, I understand. I wrote about trillium on May 1 and 10th last year; they kept me company while my mother was dying and were the last bouquet I brought her from the woods. And the spring beauties too - so delicate and fragile, such perfection in each one!

Jean and Dave - thank you both very much for the affirmation. I'm really interested to read what you have to say about comments and commenting; that's helpful and pretty much parallels my own experience - though I only read about half as many blogs as you, Dave!

[leslee]

(o)

[Teju]

close to 120 blogs

120, yikes! I'm down to about 15--and only 5 of those with the seriousness they deserve--which has meant some brutal pruning on my part. I do look at about 30 but there's no way I could read them all.

[Dave]

Yeah, but you're working on a PhD. Plus you're married. I'm not even fully employed.

[the sylph]

thanks for this. I enjoyed.

[roebuck]

Ah, snowdrops...

I picked them as a first bouquet -for- my mother each Spring, from earliest memory. Snowdrops are synonymous with magic in the near woods, for me.

Why oh why didn't I dig some up and bring them to my land when I could? Too many travels, too many years...

I must go now - in spite of the 9" of fresh snow we had last night, the cardinals are singing so sweetly...

Thanks for your evocation,

- roebuck

[Lorianne]

Oh, Beth...I'm only now getting around to reading this, and it rings as true as a bell. Grief is sudden, sly, and entirely inescapable. It will have its way with you, and at times when you least expect it. This post aches like a broken heart: thank you.

[Tom Montag]

My, this is lovely and powerful, Beth. But you know that.

[Rana]

(o)

I don't know with my head precisely what to make of this.

But my heart gets it. Thank you.