Meditations on Grief and Art

Parenting was not something I thought much about before I had kids. During those youthful years I would spend most nights roaming Vancouver’s drenched alleyways, well past midnight, obsessing about the paintings I was making, or about poetry, or films, or my addictions, or my general disgust at the thought of having to contribute to the leviathan in some way. To be sure, I was disgruntled. It’s remarkable how we snap into alignment when life’s natural rhythms beckon. Fate is fate, and I tried my best to do what was necessary. 

Art heals. 

When my angelic Smokey the Bear loving son ended his life a little over 6 years ago, I knew then the deep spiritual and philosophical dive that I thought I was in was in fact, just beginning. Like parenting, I had never thought much about grief. One never knows what it’s like to swim in the open sea until one goes swimming in the open sea. I use to hate the cold salty water. Now, I work at embracing its churning madness and jump into it’s uncertainty as much as I can. The water cleanses me, heals me and I love her as much as she loves me back. A few years ago I was in East Africa and found myself on the side of a mountain being doused with spirit water by a holy man. Fortunately, my Christian wife understood the ritual and the local dialect. She was crying tears of happiness while I was in mid cleanse. I’m not sure if my soul was saved that day, but I do remember my brain freezing because the water was as cold as the North Sea. 

Water heals. 

Six months after my son’s death, I inexplicably found myself sitting on a hard floor, with mat and a few pillows, during the first hour of a ten-day silent meditation retreat. I have no idea why I thought this would be a good idea given my emotional state at the time. It was stupid and all I wanted to do was to be home with my cat because I could relate to her in a way that was impossible with any humans. The further those meditation sessions went on the angrier and more physically uncomfortable I became. It was raw and it was real. A hundred people meditating together in silent synchrony from dawn to dusk. Still, none of it made sense to me. My grief was too boundless to tame through breath alone and trying only enflamed my hostility. Fuck the spirits because the spirits were clearly fucking with me. What a bargain! The worst possible event in my life transpires and I’m supposed to channel my breath from one moment to the next in stoic stillness. There was nothing else left to do. I was drowning in that churning sea. Then it happened. Perhaps it had to do with the fidgety teenager sitting beside me or the middle-aged man in a cast from his wrist to his shoulder a few rows in front, but something inside me let go. I had no choice. If I was going to survive, inside and outside of that hall, I needed to physically let go of that inner turmoil. Instantly, I realized that my grief was everyone’s grief, and that everyone’s grief was my grief. I felt connected to everyone. The struggle wasn’t my struggle, but our struggle. Living includes grief and it’s inescapable. From that moment, I no longer felt alone in my existentialism. I was relieved to be alive, and alive in our shared vulnerability. I think my boy would have been proud of me. I made it through those tense ten days and was thrilled to hightail it out of there driving back to the city with a touch of reckless abandon. 

Breath heals. 

Morgen would have been turning 29 today (January 5). His birthdays are difficult because it’s easy to glance sideways and think that if he had just made it through that hellish night, and that with each passing year, he’d be feeling that much better. Perhaps by now he would have decided to become a nurse, or a plumber, or a florist, or a lawyer, or a musician, or maybe he’d be a wanderer searching the earth’s secrets for connection and continuity. Maybe he would have started a family. I don’t know, but I do know we would have spent his birthday together. 

I still think a lot about art and pursue it like my life depends on it because it does. I’m still awake into the middle of the night making music, or writing poetry, or reading about other artists who inspire me. I still despise how everything in our culture is monetized, and that rampant competitiveness and selfishness puts a disastrous strain on all of earth’s animals and bio systems. To be sure, I’m still disgruntled. Though, I do now live with 2 puma like adorable kittens, have a wonderful life partner, a beautiful son who is sweet and kind and friends who I love, and I know they love me. I still meditate a few moments everyday as it does calm the waters, and I can hear Morgen’s whispers clearest then. I often fall asleep while in mid stillness which is a definite no-no in the eyes of my long-ago meditation teacher, but who cares as I must need the shut eye. Of course there are moments when I’m drowning, but often my grief resides and softens into a knowing collectivity. If that means my soul is saved well then, Hallelujah! 

Love heals. 

Lealum Selam Sitilen  

(peace to the world)

Jimy Dawn