The ocean of life Riding the waves of grief

Feb 26, 2025

I woke up at 4:30am this morning. It was pitch black other than the upside down waning moon in the sky. I sighed. That phase of the moon was my father’s favourite, he’d call it a ‘rugelach’ moon, which is the name of a Jewish sweet cake that comes in the shape of a crescent. Good morning Dad, I called out to the pre-dawn blackness.

It’s this being everywhere and nowhere that has been the most challenging, often confusing, part of mourning him. I feel him in everything, particularly the parts of life we shared together. The shapes of the moon, the pelicans that take off and land from the special spot I showed him by the Brunswick River, the tiny blue bird that likes to fly past my window or sit next to me in my garden, the white feather I tripped over when telling a friend last week how much he loved ice-cream. I feel comforted in knowing that his energetic presence hasn’t left me, and even more so, it surrounds me in a halo-like fashion.

Yet I also search for his thin, varicose vein stamped legs in his pale blue pyjamas, his gentle, slightly off-centre grin, his rosacea-tattooed cheeks and nose, his small slit-like brown eyes, the top of his semi-balding head that greeted me before everyone Zoom call, his dark navy button-down jumper, his heavy steps walking beside me. But all of this I can only see with my eyes closed now. When I open them the images are no where to be seen.

Just like the moon, we change form as humans, constantly. Although we sometimes like to think we’re static and the same, we’re not. But throughout our life there is one consistency — we have physical form. Our hair may grey, our shoulders may sink, our skin may sag, our pace may slow down, but we are seen, we are felt, we are dense. What form do we take when we’re not?

I was reading a fable from a Jewish book of mourning about two twins in-vitro. Both feeling their pending passage out of the womb, yet only one leaves at a time. When the first twin is birthed, the second one hears the cry and is petrified contemplating what is on the other side that creates such a stir.

That same question could apply after a death. Do we enter the other world with a cry too? Do we enter in silence? There are loads of near death experiences, but no one comes back from actual ongoing death to tell us. It’s the great unknown and today as I was pondering this tug between the everywhereand nowhere, I wondered if it’s only once we let go of the nowhere that we can feel the new form in the everywhere. Just like we must leave the womb to experience life.

I’m not quite there yet, nor should I be. Dad passed away three months ago yesterday. It’s still so very fresh. His missing physical presence is real and strong. How could it not be? He was my father for 53 years, how could I be finished grieving for him after 3 months. Listening to a webinar the other day, the presenter talked about grief always being present but it changes from pain to love. I liked that and it resonates deeply with the idea I just wrote about in terms of being ready to accept the new form.

But I actually believe that this can only happen once we’ve dived into the pain of the grief and truly felt it. Once we’ve ridden those waves. The grief of what we’ve lost, the grief of what we wished for and never had, the grief of what we desired but will now never have. There are layers upon layers. What I’m discovering though is that our culture, in the most part, doesn’t honour this process. We’re either encouraged to try and spiritually bypass by going straight to the everywhere, or we avoid feeling those layers of the nowhere through adding more layers of distraction.

So much of this is an inwards process, but as Francis Weller writes in his book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, we need both witnessed grief and silent grief. To be seen, held and honoured in the raw shape of sorrow is to be seen, held and honoured in our fullness. We can’t choose what to show to the world, because then we become less like the nature we are. The ocean I visit every single day has a new character. I witness her storms, her calm, her strength and her silence. I witness her dirt and her white foam, I witness her highs and her lows.

‘No one wants to hear you’re sad,’ I can’t recall how many times I’ve heard this phrase is my lifetime. But why? Sometimes I feel guilty saying, I’m still sad, I still miss him. Not because I feel guilty for feeling it, but for sharing it. It feels taboo.

We live in a toxic positivity society, when living our ‘best (happy)’ life is the only wish we place upon someone. But, is not living our best life about loving? And if we love, then we will ultimately grieve too. Whether for a departed loved one, a fallen tree, a beloved pet, a passing of time.

This beautiful poem got me through the early days of Dad’s passing. It is from the 12th century. It has stood the test of millennia. Tis’ a holy thing to love what death can touch. And in making it holy, it is only then that we can fully embrace the everywhere.

Eleh Ezkerah - These We Remember

’Tis a fearful thing

To love

What death can touch.

To love, to hope, to dream,

And oh, to lose.

A thing for fools, this,

Love,

But a holy thing,

To love what death can touch.

For your life has lived in me;

Your laugh once lifted me;