Birds in the Morning
by Claudia Coenen

The birds always wake me up before daybreak. Chirping, swooping and rustling in the leaves outside, they are foraging to fatten up before the season turns. They’ve spent the summer season building nests and raising new families. Now they will leave their temporary homes, fly elsewhere and start anew. Their activity is the cycle: build, nurture and release, repeating over and over.

I don’t remember listening so intently to the early birds before my husband died. Afterwards, I would wonder, how could they sing so loudly, when he was no longer here? I looked out the window, surprised that he was not wandering outside in the dawn. Six years later, I cannot listen to the sounds of the dawn without missing his lean frame, head tilted back to squint at the sky, cup of coffee in his hand.

Alby took his last breath on May 10, 2005. He was exhausted, worn down by his job with its excessive corporate demands and 90-hour weeks. The intuitive, sensitive man who loved music, dancing, gourmet food, science, spirituality and truth, improvisation, and most of all, his family, had no energy left. We kissed the children goodbye on May 8, and headed for New Mexico. My plan was to help him relax and then talk about changing our lives so he could get out from under the stress. We had two lovely days and he was peaceful and happy. Then, suddenly, he was gone.

Death is inevitable, so it ought to be expected. Someday it will happen, but not now, not smack in the middle of life. I certainly did not expect it, four days after his 50th birthday. When I said to him, “This job is killing you,” I did not mean it literally. Yet Death swept in, clearing away our plans, hopes, dreams, life as I knew it. Everything stopped.

A voice repeated in my head, even as I lay in a small puddle on the floor. It asked, “What are you going to DO with this?” Intuitively, I reached into my metaphorical pocket and discovered skills. I danced, literally moving with grief, I scribbled multi-colored pictures of the feelings that were washing over me. I made pictures out of fabric and embroidery. I wrote furiously, accumulating a pile of barely legible but cathartic journals. I wandered in the woods at dawn, creating personal walking meditations. I spent hours reviewing our relationship, using timelines, poetry, imagination. I asked myself, “Who am I now?” And I asked myself, “Who do I want to be now?”

The death of my husband has been an opportunity, as odd as that may sound. I wondered, could I grow from this? Could I incorporate some of his qualities into my life? This man taught me so much about compassion. Could I learn to be more compassionate? It seemed that grief was an alchemical process and I had no choice but to be boiled in it. Sorrow, so unwanted, provided a pathway for transformation.

My experience as a dancer, musician, and writer with an interest in philosophy and psychology offered me a clear framework for healing. Although I knew little about theories of grief, I somehow devised a healing regimen, which helped me rediscover my essential wholeness again. It didn’t happen overnight, in fact it took years to accomplish. Through creative process, I’ve gathered up the broken pieces of myself and reconnected.

While everyone’s grief is personal and unique to them, there are similar patterns. We all have to feel the pain, accept the death, adjust to a new life and find ways to continue our bond and to move our lives forward. The journey back to wholeness is a rough, tumultuous road and I have had a lot of help along the way. How can we find our way? How can we find the tools inside of our selves, wounded as we are by death?

In the beginning, the best approach is a narrowly focused one. Wake up in the morning and breathe. Sense your body lying on the bed, and feel what it needs. If you need to weep a little, do so. Can you get out of bed? Try it. Go to the kitchen, make yourself a cup of tea. Stop for a moment and congratulate yourself—you’ve accomplished something. You’ve even made something—a nice cup of tea. This is a creative act of self-nurturing, a healing gesture towards yourself. Find a nice place to sit and sip your tea. Check in with yourself and see what else you might need.

Acceptance begins by applying compassion to yourself. You will experience periods of intense emotion, strange, even crazy thoughts. Allow yourself time to express these feelings, to yourself, and to some trusted supporters. Even though we know the death happened, we can have dreams in which our loved one appears healthy and strong. You can work with this creatively—accept the dream as a gift. Write it down in your journal, make up a story in which you speak to your loved one, giving voice to something personal and important. Perhaps there is something you wish you had time to say—you can still say it in your journal, in a letter, in your dream. You can imagine the response if you like, but what is important is that you get to say what you need to say. Allowing yourself to bend the rules of reality will actually help you accept what has happened, in reality.

Healing with your grief is a long process. If you begin with listening to yourself, you will discover your own abilities. By taking care of yourself, you practice compassion. By accepting the care of others, your family and friends for example, you are helping them as well. Our culture does not teach us how to deal with loss; people are so uncomfortable with strong emotions and the reminder of their own mortality is hard to bear. We are also taught to be self-sufficient so it is sometimes difficult to accept help—it smacks of weakness. Grief is no time for such conventions. Let yourself feel, be vulnerable and accept the loving care of others.

Every year, a bird builds a beautiful nest out of grass and moss on a light fixture in my garage. Every year, after the babies have hatched and flown away, I remove the nest, hoping that the bird will find another home site next year. The tenaciousness of this bird, returning every year to rebuild what has been destroyed, is a reminder that we can rebuild our shattered lives after loss. It will not be the same. I am not the same. But I have found a purpose in the readjustment, and rekindled my sense of wholeness. Grief will never completely go away, but there is hope and joy in the process of rebuilding.

Claudia Coenen, MTP, uses creative process as well as her personal experience as a widow and a performer to work with grief and loss. She calls her work The Karuna Project, after a word she found in her late husband’s handwriting, on nearly every letter he wrote. The word means compassion for all. Claudia has a masters in creativity and innovation from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and has just completed her grief counseling certificate. Contact her here: www.thekarunaproject.com.