If you have read my blogs you know that I use metaphors to understand and process my grief, like the waves metaphor of grief that can come without warning to knock you off of solid footing and send you adrift. Metaphors give words and images for me to use to communicate my experiences to others. May you find your own metaphors to help you self reflect, grow, learn and heal after life challenges such as significant loss.
In June my friend, Heather, told me that she was creating a mosaic pattern on an old, worn out garden sculpture of a mushroom. During COVID isolation she was looking for projects, and this mosaic was one that she had been procrastinating for years. She just never found the time and with social isolation, she found that now she had the time. She purchased the mosaic tiles from an on-line seller and set about creating a design that expressed her creativity. She intentionally set the chips out one by one, creating order out of isolated pieces, using colors, sizes and shapes to create beautiful patterns. When she was happy with her arrangement of tiles, she glued each onto a small section of the mushroom, then connected the tiles to one another with grout.
At first, I was interested in Heather’s mosaic because I thought I could resurface the inside of my bird feeder in the same way. Well, I never got around to that. In fact, I decided that the bowl of the bird bath was too damaged and would require patching before I could put a mosaic on it. Then it hit me…I was in the process of putting the pieces of my shattered life back together again in new ways with all of the same pieces that made me, who I was before my husband died.
Probably most of you have heard of the five stages of grief described by Elizabeth Kubler Ross more than 50 years ago-denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. While many consider this model outdated and inaccurate, many still use these concepts to help understand their experiences. I think that “acceptance” has been one of the most troubling stage for many. I know that I never want to accept the death of my late husband, Terry, because acceptance implies resolution. For those of us who have lost a significant loved one, we know that there is no resolution. I have learned that a part of me will always be broken and that a hole will always be in my heart where Terry used to be. I find comfort in carrying a part of Terry with me for as long as I live, even if that part is a hole. As Willie Nelson sang, “It’s not something you get over. It’s just something you get through.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdtx-pxjX8A
When Terry died, my life and self were shattered into a million pieces. I didn’t know who I was without him. I remember the first time someone called me a widow. It was the check-in woman at the desk in the ER when I fractured my ankle. I felt like I had been slapped across the face when this sweet woman asked me, “Married, Single, Widowed?” In that moment I realized that I would never be the same starting from the day he died. As I became to feel like a widow, my self-image of a wife and Terry’s partner began to fade. Was this frightening, you bet it was! I had no idea who I was without Terry, despite the fact that I have always been very independent. I worked outside of the home in my profession. I always knew that no matter what happened in life, I would always be able to support myself. Still, without Terry, I was disconnected to who I was.
Little by little, over the months (and now almost 3 years) I gradually began to feel more whole than broken. By contemplating mosaics, I realized that part of my grief work had been putting the shattered pieces of me back together again in a new arrangement. Just as Heather created patterns of mosaic chips to create a new garden mushroom from her old one, I began to arrange pieces of me that were left in shards after Terry died. My shards are about relationships, the health of my mind, body, and soul and health of the environments that I and fellow beings and animals inhabit.
As I enter this phase of grief, I understand that my job is to put my life pieces back together again in a way that makes sense for the way I want to life. I want life with joy, laughter, meaning, and yes, love, again. I want to preserve the good things in my life, like the cherished relationships with my sons, cousins and good friends and integrate them into a new me as I move into a future that is full of love. The tiles I lay out reflect the process of re-cementing the parts of me that were shattered and disconnected. I think am learning to trust my new mosaic. My new mosaic highlights certain patterns I want to retain and grow. My mosaic allows me to bring beauty back into my life after I thought my life was irreparable after Terry. I want my life’s mosaic to be bright, reflective and full of color. I would like my mosaic to guide me into a future of my making.
Heather and her mosaic mushroom were my muses in healing from the most significant loss I have ever experienced. The new mosaic that is my life is shiny and new, yet it is made up of my life’s experiences including the nicks and cracks in the tiles from old hurts. My life mosaic tiles are arranged in new ways now, three years after Terry’ death. I never in my wildest dreams thought that it would take me three years to begin to feel whole again. In my rearranged life, some tiles faded, some crystalized, others provided the background for the newest and shiniest shards that I want to showcase. I realize now that being able to put the shattered pieces of my life back together is a gift of being human in the face of loss.
My wish for you is that you be well as you get through your loss. Grief in the age of the COVID pandemic is only more complicated than it used to be.
As my yoga instructor always said at the end of class,
“Namaste. The light in me bows to the same light within you.”