Richard Berkfield publishes “GenX Widower,” a Substack newsletter, where this piece first appeared recently.
PUTNEY-I lit a fire this morning, instantly sparking several connections in my brain.
For the last several days, the recent suicide of a young man in our community has opened up the portal to grief for me. I’ve learned that the portal opens and closes, and I’ve been really busy with the mundane for a while. When it opens, I need to find the time to slow down and pay attention.
A few days before the tragic news, I was mountain biking with some friends on a beloved trail, good for biking and walking. I have fond memories of being there: for the first time, with Angela, and, about a year ago, with an owl, really close. There is a magical and healing feel in those woods.
While riding, I learned some trail history.
The trail was built by an inspiring person whom I had the fortune of having as a neighbor when we first landed in Vermont. He later became a friend and then a co-worker. He passed away suddenly, a little over a year after Angela, when my grief portal was still wide open.
The thought of these two extraordinary people together, wherever that may be, had been an early experience of healing through accepting a paradox of grief: On the one hand, we lost these two incredible people from this Earth; and on the other, I am grateful for their incredible legacies and that they were now together exploring new trails in the unknown.
Within a few minutes of hearing the trail-building story, imagining the scene and feeling that paradox of Angela and Ward together, I faintly heard an owl calling in the woods. I slowed down to take in the sound and the feeling: to have been thinking about the two of them, and then to repeatedly hear the owl, opened up the tears.
* * *
This was my first mountain bike ride a couple of months since I bruised my ribs. After just a few moments of riding, I had the tremendous feeling of joy—of being a kid, full of laughter with a wide smile.
It’s such a gift to have these moments to balance out the feelings of grief. When I heard the owl and connected those two people to it and to this exact place, I was joyfully biking and crying at the same time, present in that extraordinary space.
And somehow this morning, assembling the fire created a connection between that owl’s call and the loss of that young man this week and the ripples of grief throughout the community.
My almost immediate reaction to the news was the thought/prayer that Angela was welcoming him in with all her tenderness, unconditional love, and acceptance. That he had her support. She was holding him.
And then I realized that she’s been welcoming lots of people. She was such a light for people here in their dark times, and now she’s doing the same in this other space.
* * *
I don’t know yet, but I imagine it’s a much more powerful, scary place for a lot of people, and to know that Angela and so many other ancestors are there, supporting our crossing over, brings me to tears. The similar tears to those induced by the owl on the trail — almost tears of joy, tears of acceptance, that they are there on the other side, fulfilling their new role.
She’s on the other side, providing all the magic for people that she did here. That just feels so tremendous and purposeful for her. And offers another opportunity for me to let go in my grieving process.
I see her on the other side, being the same person, yet wiser from her journey. She’s the same light for those of us who go there, and we all will. I feel better about losing her to her new role. I feel better for when that time comes for me and for when that time comes for others. Angela and other ancestors are there for us.
These portals open from time to time and I am grateful for them, grateful for these realizations, thoughts or connections that I finally make. Maybe these moments are about feeling deeply, embodying what I have thought or read, that others know and have seen.
Sometimes I feel that I am simply having new experiences walking the same terrain, encountering new versions of myself, sometimes on the same trail.
* * *
And then I read this from Sophie Strand, a writer who experienced the loss of a beloved friend:
“I was reminded of a quote from one of my favorite meditations on loss, A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis.
“‘Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.’
“Grief is a landscape. A territory. You must walk through it. You must press your feet to its contours and devote your own shape [to] its foreign topography. But sometimes it reveals a new view, not of yourself or your landscape, but of the loved one lost.”
This portal provided a new view of Angela, and all my loved ones lost. Moments like these take me around another bend, opening me up to slow down, see the view of the valley, and take in the feelings that arise.
As the days are getting darker and the sun is farther away from me, I am reminded to be on the lookout as I continue experiencing the new on familiar terrain.
This Voices Essay was submitted to The Commons.
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