Grief is a like a Rock
Sometimes it feels flat in the palm of your hand, a smooth, rounded pebble from a mountain stream. Sometimes it’s a jagged sedimentary rock filled with years of build-up and it’s so brittle it breaks off in your hand, large chunks first that fall apart like sand between your fingers. The memories spilling out. Other times, grief is a large quiet rock, a coastline’s barrier rising out from the sea like the Great Orme Rock in Whales, rounded on sides, it’s wide birth a bounty being battered with cold, gray waves. I feel like grief is a rock because it has many stages and takes a long time to form. Time will age it’s appearance.
Sometimes we have to be a rock too when it comes to grief. For me, it was one of the first stages I went through. At first, I was in shock, but realized I had to write my mom’s obituary, plan her funeral, select her church music, order prayer cards, frame photos for a memorial table and so on. I was so busy trying to make everything special for mom’s funeral, I didn’t have time to initially grieve her like I needed. I walked around in a fog, making the motions but not diving into grief’s abysses. I was the flat rock, cold and hard.
After the funeral when I finally got home, my rock exterior finally started to break away and I cried for days after that, sometimes my eyes swelled shut. Death was only the beginning. But it was not the end. Mom had a journey to go on. I was going to make sure she did.
One of the woman I met on my trip to France was a young woman named Janet. She lived in South Carolina, just a state below from me. She had recently lost her father and was also dealing with her own grief trying to find a way to navigate through it. I remember thinking I was running away from my grief to France and when I went there, the women I met were dealing with the same thing. We ran away and toward the same thing at the same time. Funny how things happen that way. I believe I was meant to go to France, to meet new beautiful friends, to see grief from someone else's point of view. To see it from another angle.
Janet was in the process of renovating a property in Llandudno, Whales and had planned trips there over the course of a few years to turn the large house into a holiday rental. She said she would be happy to help take moms ashes on her journey. Just a few short months after I started my ash project in summer of 2015, Janet sent me the beautiful pictures of mom’s ashes at the Great Orme Rock which is a large limestone healdland that juts out into the northern sea in Whales. The rock is referred to as “Cyngreawdr Fynydd” by the 12th-century poet Gwalchmai ap Meilyr. Its English name derives from the Old Norse word for sea serpent. It may have been named that because sailors when approaching the large rock jutting up from the sea said it looked like a serpent. It rises up 679 feet from the sea with cool gray limestones. Janet took a walk that day and took the cable car/tram to the top and tried to find a location that would allow for wide views below. It took her about three hours round trip to take her walk that beautiful day during the summer of 2015.
The Great Orme has many animals that are only found there like the silver-studded blue butterfly. You can also see wild Kashmor goats with large pointy horns and shaggy coats. And one of the largest Bronze Age mines is down the road.
The Great Orme Rock is just across the sea from Ireland. How close mom came to her final resting place on one of her first stops.
I'm so grateful to have met Janet. She is kind, funny, and it was great fun getting to know her. I am forever grateful to her and all of the people who were willing to help me with this project and open up about how grief changed their own landscapes. For Janet, grief sometimes grabs a hold and changes colors. “Someone recently described our heart being like a circle. Grief colors everything when it happens. We build a bigger circle around it and that includes a lot of light. Grief hits again and again, colors everything, until we grow that circle yet again. I liked that explanation.” Janet says. What a wonderful way to think of grief and its many circles and colors. Grief can help you grow and not shrink into yourself. It can be a smooth, flat, or a jagged rock like a serpent. It can be whatever you need it to be.
Sometimes it feels flat in the palm of your hand, a smooth, rounded pebble from a mountain stream. Sometimes it’s a jagged sedimentary rock filled with years of build-up and it’s so brittle it breaks off in your hand, large chunks first that fall apart like sand between your fingers. The memories spilling out. Other times, grief is a large quiet rock, a coastline’s barrier rising out from the sea like the Great Orme Rock in Whales, rounded on sides, it’s wide birth a bounty being battered with cold, gray waves. I feel like grief is a rock because it has many stages and takes a long time to form. Time will age it’s appearance.
Sometimes we have to be a rock too when it comes to grief. For me, it was one of the first stages I went through. At first, I was in shock, but realized I had to write my mom’s obituary, plan her funeral, select her church music, order prayer cards, frame photos for a memorial table and so on. I was so busy trying to make everything special for mom’s funeral, I didn’t have time to initially grieve her like I needed. I walked around in a fog, making the motions but not diving into grief’s abysses. I was the flat rock, cold and hard.
After the funeral when I finally got home, my rock exterior finally started to break away and I cried for days after that, sometimes my eyes swelled shut. Death was only the beginning. But it was not the end. Mom had a journey to go on. I was going to make sure she did.
One of the woman I met on my trip to France was a young woman named Janet. She lived in South Carolina, just a state below from me. She had recently lost her father and was also dealing with her own grief trying to find a way to navigate through it. I remember thinking I was running away from my grief to France and when I went there, the women I met were dealing with the same thing. We ran away and toward the same thing at the same time. Funny how things happen that way. I believe I was meant to go to France, to meet new beautiful friends, to see grief from someone else's point of view. To see it from another angle.
Janet was in the process of renovating a property in Llandudno, Whales and had planned trips there over the course of a few years to turn the large house into a holiday rental. She said she would be happy to help take moms ashes on her journey. Just a few short months after I started my ash project in summer of 2015, Janet sent me the beautiful pictures of mom’s ashes at the Great Orme Rock which is a large limestone healdland that juts out into the northern sea in Whales. The rock is referred to as “Cyngreawdr Fynydd” by the 12th-century poet Gwalchmai ap Meilyr. Its English name derives from the Old Norse word for sea serpent. It may have been named that because sailors when approaching the large rock jutting up from the sea said it looked like a serpent. It rises up 679 feet from the sea with cool gray limestones. Janet took a walk that day and took the cable car/tram to the top and tried to find a location that would allow for wide views below. It took her about three hours round trip to take her walk that beautiful day during the summer of 2015.
I'm so grateful to have met Janet. She is kind, funny, and it was great fun getting to know her. I am forever grateful to her and all of the people who were willing to help me with this project and open up about how grief changed their own landscapes. For Janet, grief sometimes grabs a hold and changes colors. “Someone recently described our heart being like a circle. Grief colors everything when it happens. We build a bigger circle around it and that includes a lot of light. Grief hits again and again, colors everything, until we grow that circle yet again. I liked that explanation.” Janet says. What a wonderful way to think of grief and its many circles and colors. Grief can help you grow and not shrink into yourself. It can be a smooth, flat, or a jagged rock like a serpent. It can be whatever you need it to be.
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Chrstina