Grief is My Muse
I’ve tried to make the best of it.
I’ve spent much of my life thinking about the way that grief breaks us wide open and allows our hearts to grow. I grew up in a mining town, filled with loss and tragedy. And, although I wasn’t around for many of the great tragedies, the effects of loss and trauma filtered into my generation and the generations before and after.
I lost my best male friend when I was sixteen to a motor vehicle accident. Both of my grandfathers had died by then, but they were older, and although it was sad, we expect older people to pass on. They’ve lived long lives. It’s the natural way of things. This was different. My friend was eighteen. The possibility of a long life had been snatched away from him. I didn’t understand what it was to have someone close to me one minute and gone the next. And I didn’t know how to talk about it. Neither did anyone else in my family. Consequently, I didn’t talk about losing him. Instead, I watched tv, lots of tv, which isn’t a great life for a sixteen-year-old.
Real devastation hit my family when I was in my twenties. My brother’s wife had twins and one of them died. My brother, Mark, two years younger than me, spent many days at the hospital with the twin who lived. The following year Mark died in a tragic motorcycle accident. The next year, the other twin died. I used to think that…
