Because the tree looked very old, I thought it might have some ancient wisdom from when there were fewer things in the world.
Grief is a bit like stepping from island to island. It comes in waves and we try to hold on until we get to the next island, the next moment of peace. In a sense, I needed my surroundings to mirror this process. For the last year, I have felt a pull towards being surrounded by nature. Nature reminds me that there is an ebb and flow to life, a waxing and a waning. This is so much like the phenonomen of waves used to describe grief. When I see the trees shedding their autumn leaves, it reminds me that everything has a time for letting go. I particularly love the night-time, the peaceful darkness that feels like a cloak of intimacy and endless possibilities. There is a steady sense of permanance, as if everything exists on a single plane and time is being held at bay.
Nature provided steady re-assurance and comfort for me when stepping into a “new normal”. Our old normal of living in one of the most vibrant cities in England was too loud, too brash, too grey. Stuck in a mass of concrete, living in a box next to hundreds of other boxes – with noisy bustling lives continuing on and our new normal sideswiping us every time we stepped outside. The chasm between us and the rest of society felt overwhelming and I needed to move outside my normal frame of reference to get some peace. My father who recognised this sent me a poem by Yeats that he used to read to me:
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
We sought to be an island and suddenly we were. We were lucky to have a house in the South of France and it felt right to go there, even if it was without Oliver. My husband was able to commute to England for 3 days a week and work from home in France. In French, the literal translation of foreigner is stranger. This perfectly mirrored the way that I was feeling – slightly estranged from society – and allowed me to mourn fully and completely. From the detached standpoint of an observer, I would walk around cities there, fascinated by the commonality of people and what stories, what pain lay behind their public face. Despite craving silence and finding it hard to hear English being spoken, the French language floated down around me like calming background music.
It was winter, and the darkness of the French countryside was impenetrable at night. Initially, this darkness acted as a “sort of invisible blanket between the world and me”. I loved it being so cold and barren, loved the sympathetic landscape of rain and short grey days. In France they poetically call it “l’heure bleue” : suspended time where there is neither full daylight or complete darkness. Yet the flow of nature continued on. I remember the re-appearance of V upon noisy V of cranes. I had seen them making their descent to warmer climes in the Autumn and their return signalled to me the arrival of the Spring with its lighter days and new beginnings.
Our experience this year has taught us the importance of following instincts – of choosing where to nest, when to rest and when to act. In a Grief Observed, CS Lewis writes that “I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process.” When you are in the midst of this process, it is so important to take the time and space you need – to find tranquility in the lulls between waves and gather yourself for the approach of the next – for peace comes dropping slow.
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