Good Grief 148

Fight club
The fight continues

It's curious, isn't it, the language that can go with all of these things? We fight cancer, do battle with depression, fight the good fight. We struggle so, understandably, with our suffering - the suffering of ourselves, of others and of the world, which, in turn, becomes our own suffering again. Very soon it is overwhelming. Work has felt a bit that way this week.
And yet, with grief it tends to revolve around acceptance - a word that can really piss me off, not because of a wish to 'hang on' or difficulties 'letting go', but because it tends to involve exactly those kinds of expressions, those cliches that miss and slip over, move on quickly past, a vast seam of difficult to express experience. I think I've said all this before.
It is interesting too, that if you use the language of acceptance with depression it is frequently regarded as weak, giving in, or, at best, 'unhelpful'. I can understand that too (not the judgement laden ones).
I guess this blip is about the interplay between the two. The light, the dark, the knots, the twists, the desire to let the difficult feeling be, like an unwanted, difficult child. Accepted and nurtured for all its, sometimes/often self-destructive, nature. Yet also trying to keep hold of the fact that it may not be the whole story. And trying to tolerate that uncertainty in whatever ways we can.

Since writing that I got going. I think it's more like one of those slow motion fights where each fighter has come of their corner full of boxing bravado and quickly lapse into a slowmo exhaustion punching the air. Quite funny really. Sometimes.
'So', as Seamus Heaney would say (such a miracle of translation that was, and such interesting things that emerge from it ... both I and my husband - god, I sound like the queen - will giggle into eternity over the day we heard the live recording of The Prelude and the facilitator, in his own classic way , saying to the performer .... '
" I ... I ... [wait for it wait for it ....] ... I particularly like your use of the word ....'it' ...."
It still evokes the urge to giggle inside me just as the day it happened ... we were like sniggering children, and it was all SO serious!).
I miss him so.

.... So ...having gone right off beam ... I have made 2 calls, one to the funeral directors (my sister and I realise we had missed contacting them about the sending of donations from dad's funeral to the charities). The other was to the lovely Stuart who is looking after Fanad for me over winter. It will cost. She offers freedom, connection, possibility, love, loss, sadness and happiness. I noticed I both feared making the call and was glad. She too is part of the struggle of , 'what's the point?' and 'keep going - this is this moment, just let it take it's shape'. More struggle. More tolerance of uncertainty. More dancing with the moment. More light and shadow.