Grief is a Bloodhound

I didn’t expect it to go away. Not completely. There is nothing magical about a change of venue. Not even here, in the Land of Enchantment. There are expansive vistas in all directions, fiery sunrises and sunsets, other-worldly night skies crusted with stars, the mournful call of coyotes in the night. In all directions, mountains rise—the Sangre de Cristos to the northeast, the Jemez to the west, the Ortiz and Sandias to the south. The sun is intense these days; the locals say it’s freakishly warm for November. But as winter encroaches, the darkness gathers, the temperatures drop, and the winds blow. The air, the sky, the land—they reach for you, envelope you, claim you. They turn you away from who you were and what you knew before, if you will let them. I will let them. I will certainly try.

And yet. And yet. There was one thing I had hoped to shed but haven’t. Not even here. When you are missing your child, even this magic has its limits.

At home, there are ghosts in every tree; memories around every corner. The place where his friend from kindergarten lived. The crack in the street where he fell off his skateboard and sprained his wrist. The neighborhood of that girlfriend we didn’t really care for. His schools—all three of them.

You attempt to pick up the pieces, make your way through whatever life you have left, move through the geography of your days. But these places rise up, deliver a blow to your chest, knock the wind out of you. Some you see coming. A lot you don’t.

Shouldn’t you be able to leave all this behind when you physically move away? Isn’t that the reward for taking this plunge, showing this courage?

I had hoped so. I had hoped that all this newness; the onslaught of visions and sensations that come with this great Southwest adventure would banish the ghosts. Turns out, it doesn’t work like that. Grief is a bloodhound, a magnet, a heat-seeking missile. It will find you, wherever you go.

There’s a grief meditation I listen to sometimes. It speaks of the uniqueness of losing a child, while at the same time pointing out that those who have experienced it are not alone. There are millions of us. Does that help? I’m not sure why, but it kind of does.

This meditation uses the image of warm, pulsing, pink light as the blanket to pull around your heart when the grief closes in. That blanket is your solace, your comfort, your way—and there really aren’t many of them—to be good to yourself when the darkness descends. This morning, I watched the dawn break over the Sangre de Cristos. It started with a lifting of the darkness over the horizon; a move from black to purple to pink. The glow intensified, pulsed, spread. Eventually, it bled out all over the sky, turning the east a fiery orange and every other direction a palate of pinks and purples. I stood in the cold morning, transfixed. I pulled that blanket of warm pulsing light in, tucking it in around my aching heart.

I miss you, Carson. I miss that you are not here to share this with. I resent that there is another experience you don’t get to have. At least not here. And not with me. That is a sad central fact of my life.

My clients ask: does it get better? And as much as I want to ease their pain, I have to answer them honestly: it doesn’t get better. But we do. We get better.

Here in the land of enchantment, I greedily seize this blanket of light and wrap it around me. I do it to face another day.