some notes on grief

Field Note no. 11 | a very personal post about beauty and loss

In this post I write about something deeply personal that happened to me and my family recently. Most of it is behind a paywall because it feels safer to write about it there. I write about grief, I write about finding beauty in the shards of this loss. Having read the excerpt below, if you feel you would like to read on, but are not currently a paid subscriber, please do reach out and I will arrange access for you.

The kids went back to school yesterday. The late summer light danced about on their clothes as I waved them off, new school bags proudly strapped onto their backs, pencil cases organised, new lunch boxes full. This morning is the first time I’ve been alone for any period of time in weeks, maybe months. At times I thought I would lose my mind this sunmer, it all felt so intense, but now they are gone back, I regret we did not have more time…it is always this way with mothering, isn’t it? This push and pull.

It is 11:43am, and I’ve finally started writing this post. I’ve needed to pad my way towards it, make the beds, put on a wash, reply to some messages, read some other people’s words. Get up, make a coffee, hang up the wash, put another on. I used to feel this was time wasting – these short hours are so precious, stop faffing about! – but I’ve learnt that this is my way of sidling up to the words, particularly after some time away, particularly when the words are going to be hard to pen. My pottering about is a limbering up, it is an opening up, it is a formal courting dance with the page.  

August was planned as a languorous, loose-limbed time. Head down for July, juggle, bumble, make it through and then spread-eagle ourselves for August, let all but the most pressing of duties fall away.

And then on July 30, a month ago today, all that changed. In a single moment all atoms were rearranged. It is hard to write about what happened, it is only a month ago, it is raw, it is private, it is not just my story to tell. But I will share the edgelands of it here. This newsletter is called beauty & bone and the last few weeks have been just that – my family and I have been touching the marrow of things, grief has brought us to a deep molten core. I have seen, too, the astounding beauty in life, of, in particular, the goodness in people and their hearts. It has, truly, been a time of beauty and of bone.