Poetry & Pushpins

~ The Writings of S.L. Woodford

Poetry & Pushpins

Tag Archives: grief

An Old Orchard and a New Year

31 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Gardening, Pushpins (Daily Life), Romantic Botany, The Creative Life

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botany, grief, human nature, learning patience, Midwest, New Year, resiliency, running

My nose is cold, but every other part of my body is hot and sweaty. Morning runs in the winter-touched, Midwestern countryside will do that to you. With hands on my hips, I turn around and look back at my grandmother’s property. An apple orchard stands at attention on my right and on my left, creating a passageway of arching limbs. These trees were the guardians of my childhood. I played among them, hide behind them, and once, in a fit of teenage romanticism, longed to get married under them. They were already old when I was young, planted by turn of the century hands. Their roots have had a hundred years to expand and grow and thrive, embraced by the rich Ohio soil. And steadily anchored, their limbs, weathered and withered, reach out to one another and to the sky, touched by a century’s worth of wind and rain and sun. Sometimes, the touch was hash, and the grass between the two rows became a no man’s land of branches and bark.

In spite of such losses, they still stand, their branches stretching out before them, towards each other and to the sky. Receptive of whatever the elements will give them next. Yes, they lost branches and bark, and will most likely lose them again. But, they have roots, made strong by the years and the soil that nourishes them.

Twenty-nine is young, at least, that is what my older friends tell me. Yet twenty-nine doesn’t feel young to me. I’ve lived enough of life to know loss—the loss of a parent, of a self, of a significant other, of a much coveted career, of a best friend. And like a harsh wind tearing away a tree branch, the loss strips you, exposing you to the elements in new, unforeseen ways. There is pain and fear in that experience, but there is also power. For the exposed place becomes a surface of possibility. If your roots are deep and the soil you place yourself in is rich, new bark will grow, and your branches will once more reach out to others and to the world.

I do not feel old because I have suffered loss, I feel old because I have seen the other side of loss. That in its wake, come new possibilities and new chances to love. Loss levels, but after all is stripped away, you have the choice to create again. Perhaps that is my hope for you and for me in the New Year: that we become more like these trees, quietly standing to my left and to my right. Rooted in who we are so that we can be open to what we will become.

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Personality Puppetry and Grief

16 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

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friendship, grief, librarians, writing

Recently, I sent a friend a text. The content wasn’t important. Perhaps it was about meeting up or figuring out a decent time to chat amidst our mutually busy lives. But after sending it, I slumped back into my office chair, overcome by tears of relief. For the first time in a year, I saw me in the grammar and vocabulary of the text—neither S.L. Woodford the writer, who tends to favor long, elegant sentences and whimsical witticisms, nor Sarah L. Woodford (Library Director), who strides about her texts and e-mails with jolly precision and no-nonsense professionalism, but simply Sarah, a human being who doesn’t favor any sort of sentence structure and would much rather be spending her time cooking, drinking tea, reading, playing music, gardening, and being part of the joys and difficulties of her friends’ lives.

Only as I sobbed did I realize how much I’ve hidden behind both my librarian and writer personae this year. Given the pain that the death of my mother spewed into my life, it makes sense why it happened. Grief casts such a sharp, white pain onto your life, that it’s easier to hold up the simple shapes of your personality, like puppets, and let their shadows dance in the harsh light. The shadows you cast can make you appear whole even when you are not. S.L. Woodford and Sarah L. Woodford were structured, predictable roles. I knew the expectations and assumptions that came with playing them. But being Sarah was much more unpredictable. Grief threw some of my deepest held personality traits into upheaval and direct contradiction. I’m rather self-sufficient and usually a resource for others; I had to learn how to ask others for help this year. I’m also someone who primarily finds comfort and love in thoughtful words—yet, words seemed so empty and distant this year. I just longed to be held, to be shielded. Grief made me cry in ladies’ toilets, run out of concerts, and carry around packets upon packets of tissues. It made me irrationally terrified of beginning new relationships (because even good things end, and it’s hard and sucky and awful). And if there was any possibility of rejection, of silence, or of misunderstanding, at the hands of my fellow human beings, I kept my distance. I had quite enough big, complicated emotions to deal with already. I didn’t need anything new.

And if I couldn’t predict who I was or how I would act, why would I subject others to my inconsistencies and deep pain? S.L. Woodford and Sarah L. Woodford were much safer and steadier creatures to know. Sarah needed a year of hermitage.

Grief casts such a sharp, white pain onto your life, that it’s easier to hold up the simple shapes of your personality, like puppets, and let their shadows dance in the harsh light. The shadows you cast can make you appear whole even when you are not.

But there I was, in 160 characters or less, joyfully reaching out to my friend. And through the tears, I was happy and awed. Happy, that the desire to connect was still within me. Awed, that the will to earnestly step into the life of another (but only if you’re wanted :)) was at last returning.

Pillows and Dragons

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Literature, Pushpins (Daily Life)

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books, grief

Though the sun is out and I am not yet physically tired, I am in my pajamas, under my bed’s covers. The sunbeams that sprint across my bedroom floor are excitable and bright—so different from my current mood. I roll onto my stomach, smashing my face into my pillow’s dark silence. Thankful that my bed is warm and my blankets are soft.

What a two weeks I have had.

Actually, what a year I have had.

I never thought that managing the grief surrounding my mother’s death would be so hard, so time consuming, so revealing of my internal strengths and weaknesses. Both friends and acquaintances are quick to assure me that I’ve handled this year with patience and poise—I’m glad of their assurances and relieved that those in my community have experienced my grieving process in such a manner. For me, there isn’t a choice between being gracious as I process my big emotions through writing, and being a noticeable mass of sorrow and pain as I air my emotions out in public. I’ll always choose the former, if I can help it, for the latter is hardly a constructive way for me to live life.

In those moments when I feel deep pain and loss, I need control. The librarian in me needs to define and arrange those emotions and the writer in me needs to make sense of them. Manners and writing both have rules and expectations that are easy to follow, easy to understand. It is their structure that gives me assurance that not everything has to change in the midst of emotional upheaval.

But, it’s all so exhausting—maintaining order, wrestling with chaos.

Today is not the first afternoon that I’ve sought the solace of my pillow while daylight giddily tripped across my bedroom floor. This ritual of pajamas and blankets and bed I have practiced all year. Perhaps I should be more vexed when I am facedown in my pillow on a sunny afternoon:  Yet, I cannot be. I need my pillow to remind me that yes, this year has been an emotional hell, so I’d better get some rest. I have to continue fighting the good fight when I get up again.

coloring-pages-dragons-4From: karenswhimsy.com

Any other day, I would savor the sun and its glowing warmth. I cannot take it today. I roll onto my left side, away from the sun and towards my bedroom wall. It meets my eyes with a tiny patch of paint bubbles, speckling its surface. I absently study it and think of heroes and knights craning their necks to read their destinies in the stars. Though these warriors answer to varying names like King Arthur, St. George, and Ivanhoe, we tend to tell their stories in the similar ways: The hero sets off on on a hard (but epic) mission, solves the riddles, slays the dragon / monster / enemy, saves the princess / noblewoman, marries said princess / noblewoman, and then proceeds to party hard with his bros—drinking horns and boar’s heads abounding in his castle’s great hall. And that is where the story ends. We walk with the knight through his struggles and leave him as his narrative reaches an euphoric pitch.

But what happens next?

What does the hero do when his bros are gone and his beloved is embroidering something in the solarium?

I’d like to think that he stays in bed, buries his face in his pillow, and thanks God for the momentary reprieve from life’s quests, riddles, and dragons. And in the silence, he finds the strength to get up again

 

Balance

21 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life)

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empathy, grief, Midwest, New England

It still sucks that our Mom died when we were both still in our twenties. But, these phone conversations with my brother are becoming some of my life’s most sacred moments.

 

“Hey, Mattie. Thanks for calling me back.”

I sit on a garden bench, behind a mansion-turned-Yale-administrative building, concealed from the casual observer by clematis vines. As I lean further back into my verdant hiding place, my “e’s” and “a’s” ascend up my nose and echo in my nasal cavities. The carefully enunciated speech I use daily at Yale—the speech that others sometimes mistake as an English person’s when I’m either very nervous, or just trying to create polite, social distance at cocktail parties—begins to relax, nestling itself into a warm, Northeastern Ohio twang.

My words instinctively know that I have no need for nerves or polite social distance as I sit concealed by clematis vines. I’m speaking with my younger brother. And, concealing myself from the once little boy, who used to wipe boogers on me, is a very unwise thing to do. Especially, since that little boy is now a competent, gentle young man.

We talk about his forthcoming visit, maritime history, human psychology, and his friends. Subjects we have often touched upon in previous phone conversations. But, now that our Mom has been dead for exactly a year, our conversations also explore something else: family management. We talk about how our Dad and our 93 year-old Grandmother are actually doing, comparing conversations, trading observations, voicing concerns, and brainstorming solutions (if necessary). We also cry (me more than him) while uttering reflections about our Mom. Reflections only we two would understand, because we were her children.

The more we speak to each other in this way, the more I believe that we are creating a form of healthy communication we shall use with each other for the rest of our lives. We will only continue to make decisions about how to maintain and ensure our family’s well-being, property, and monetary assets as Dad and Grandma continue to age. I’m glad that we’re building this strong, open report now. I find that hard decisions become less difficult if you’re making them with someone you love, trust, and understand.

It still sucks that our Mom died when we were both still in our twenties. But, these phone conversations with my brother are becoming some my life’s most sacred moments. For through them, I see time shrink, merge, and fall away. Mattie is 24, and I, 28—a four-year age gap differentiating our life experiences. A huge chasm in our youth, especially during his booger-wiping phase, that is a chasm no longer. This young man on the other end of the phone and I seem to share more and more as we age. Though he has Mom’s coloring and I have Dad’s, we share our Mom’s cheekbones, eye sockets, and weirdly Romanesque nose. Though he is a mechanical engineer that specializes in historical machines and I am a librarian who specializes in Christian theology, we both deal with creating mechanized order and preserving history in our careers. Though he was socialized as a male and I a female, we have socialized each other to appreciate compassionate men and self-sufficient women. And between us, we have cultivated a penchant for Jane Austen, the Sandman comics, video games, British sitcoms, hiking, classical literature, sailing, and history.

But, most importantly, Mattie and I share the deep pain of losing our Mom, and, the responsibility of loving our family well in her absence.

I tell Mattie this, all of this, and he is quiet for a long time. “Well you know Sis, the universe always has a way of balancing itself out.”

It is my turn to be silent as I stare up into the sky, letting Mattie’s words properly seep into my thoughts. The sky is thick and dense with flat gray clouds. Yet, a rainbow gracefully arches across those clouds, its colors made even more vivid by the stark gray background.  A spray of water hits my cheeks, I only now realize it is raining, and I look up—higher—into the sky. This rainbow has a twin. A quiet echo of itself in color and shape.

“Yes Mattie, I must agree with you. The Universe does have a way of balancing itself out.”

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A Tissue, a tissue, a tissue for my Grief

30 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

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empathy, grief, New Haven

And here we are, perched on the precipice of May. In New Haven, that means final exam studying for Yale students, the cherry blossoms burgeoning in Wooster Square, and the one year anniversary of mom’s death.

As April ends, my body seems to be simultaneously remembering and bracing itself for the raw pain and disbelief that occurred in the early hours of a late May morning last year—my brother in Ohio and I in Connecticut, linked together by technology and shock, as we waited for the paramedics to leave and the coroner to come.

That shock, that silence, I experienced last May has quite worn off. Now, for the first time in my life, I am prone to tears in public. Everything from the singing of my mother’s favorite hymn to a flitting memory of a place, a time, an object we shared, brings on an onslaught of silent tears. Snotty, gross, face-pinching tears.

This Sunday was no exception. I attended a friend’s recital, and, as I’m prone to do these days, I thoroughly read the program notes in advance. The final piece, Triptych by Tarik O’Regan, dealt heavily with death and remembrance, i.e. plenty of emotional triggers for me. I breathed a sigh of relief. Big emotions would hit me around movement 2, and I’d be ready.

Except, I wasn’t.

As the choir began to sing about how we remember our dead through all life’s the seasons, both emotional and natural, I began to cry–quietly and hard. I reached into my pocket, looking for a tissue, a soft, white wisp of paper that would make my emotional rawness a little more polite (one should not have snot running down one’s face in public; unless, you are a toddler and do not yet have the proper motor skills to amend the situation). There was no tissue. I was out.

But at that moment, something soft fell on my left hand. I looked down. There was a tissue: white, clean, and from my friend Tawnie. She had also been reading the program notes, figured out that movement 2 would be hard for me, looked over for confirmation, and mercifully threw me a tissue.

I couldn’t help smiling through my tears. There was something utterly ridiculous and wonderful about the whole encounter. Though my body possessed a grief that was raw, deep, and barely controllable, that little white tissue, barely the weight of a feather, freely given, freely thrown, gently answered my loss and pain with love and care. That which appeared to be fragile conquered that which appeared to be fathomless.

 

Art after Death and Chaos

05 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

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books, grief, the creative process, writing

I had quite the Saturday last week. The day was evenly broken into two events: singing at a former classmate’s memorial service and attending the launch of a friend’s first book.

I was sure it would be an emotionally grueling day. The former event reminding me of my mother’s funeral only seven months ago, and the latter event challenging me to network and small talk with people I did not know well. And in many ways, the day was grueling. I needed to seek out the occasional quiet space, so that my brain could sort out all the emotional stimulation this social marathon of a day gave it. But, it could have been so much worse. Though I needed to make allowances for my slightly introverted wiring, I went to sleep that night inspired by a single idea: when it is most needed, human beings create Art.

With a myriad of choristers and some dear friends, the memorial service choir navigated a wonderful middle ground between Anglican Church music and jazz. Our voices filled the church space with the joy of sound, a strong reminder amidst the grief that we celebrated the life our colleague led. Then, with a myriad of writers, friends, and librarians, I sat in the New Haven Free Public Library as Adrian Bonenberger read from Afghan Post. A memoir he started writing, upon returning from active duty in Afghanistan, to help him through PTSD’s relentless aftershocks.

Art. Beauty. Creation. All three present in the wake of grief, tragedy, and intensity last Saturday. All three offering those afflicted an opportunity to take life’s confusion and brokenness and abrupt endings into their hands, and create something new, something empathetic, something worth living for.

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White Space

15 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in The Creative Life

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grief, the creative process, writing

20140115-013554.jpg

There it is.

That horrid white space.

Again.

Balls.

It’s bright blankness blazes out from my laptop screen. It stuns my eyes, muddles my chest, and makes it hard for me to draw breath. I’ve never been stabbed, but it surely couldn’t be worse than the grating panic that currently slices through me.

With much effort, I look away from the screen. I think about friends, tea cups, climbing trees, George Harrison (circa 1965), today’s to do list, fuzzy quarter horses–anything to ease my stiffened body. Finally relaxed, I look back, determined to write another sentence, no matter what horrible memories it may trigger.

And I write, sometimes fluidly, sometimes tentatively, until the white space overwhelms me again.

Writing isn’t always this hard–yet, when I write about Mom’s death, this is the norm. Does it surprise me? Not really. Mom’s death was unexpected and horrible and shocking. I loved her very much and miss her doubly so. But, I’m not someone who is terribly keen on public displays of emotion, especially if those displays leave me snot faced and red-eyed. So, my words become my tears. I prefer keeping my grief quiet, sentenced, and away from the immediate judgement of others: making the white space my solace and my hell.

In the white space, I get to make sense of Mom’s death and find the hope to move forward. That’s the problem. Mom’s death doesn’t make sense to me. She was a perfectly healthy fifty-six year old woman. So, I am left to construct a fiction, a story, that can sooth the pain the confusion leaves me. It’s hard to build a foundation on top of an ever spiraling void.

Still, when I am persistent, I get lucky. Out of its blankness emerges sentences, images, and ideas that do comfort me; and, if I’m really, really lucky, comfort other people. If that’s my reward, why should I stop confronting the white space? I can’t. I won’t. I’ll just think about George Harrison’s soulful eyes and fuzzy quarter horses and get back to typing.

Icons at 3:19 A.M.

13 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life), Religious Exploration, The Creative Life

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Christian community, grief, technology, the creative process, writing

“Icons” is my newest non-fiction. Published in the The Living Church, this little piece is getting a lot of attention. It was even mentioned as a story “worth noting” by AnglicansOnline. The editor writes that:

S.L. Woodford writes in The Living Church (Milwaukee) on death, grief, and text-messages.

And, I do just that. Yet, I cannot think of it as a stand alone piece. In my mind, it will always be linked to something I wrote for Hartford Faith & Values entitled “3:19 A.M.” Both deal with my shock, grief, and yearning for beauty after the unexpected death of my mother. “3:19 A.M.” explores the morning I received the news and “Icons” tells the story of the day after.

Mom’s been dead for five months and I’m deeply glad that I wrote both pieces so soon after her death—each one preserves the hardest, but richest, moments of my life, while setting my love for her as a permanent reality, like a leaf within amber.

Read “Icons” here.

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