The Hard Week

Greater Camas flower.

This is a picture of a Greater Camas flower. It is a beautiful, showy flower native to the Pacific Northwest. It blooms in the second half of May. This particular specimen is growing in Ferndale, Washington on the green burial grave of a man I called my best friend. The eleventh anniversary of his death is in just a few days. Eleven years ago, the week leading up to his death was spent in the ICU after an unknown genetic condition snuck up on him, causing a cardiac arrest. This is a hard week. It is a hard week every year. It always starts on the anniversary of the heart attack. Even if I am not paying any attention to the calendar, when that day rolls around, my body knows. The grief settles over me like a worn, old, crinkly tarp that muffles everything else. Maybe it is the angle of light this time of year. Maybe it’s the smell of mid-Spring.  Whatever the trigger is, my body remembers, even before my mind can run the calculations.

The grief isn’t nearly as acute, or as ravaging now that eleven years have passed. But it is my constant companion for the week. It muddles my thinking, cuts my patience off at the knees, and makes being alone as equally frustrating as being with people. Especially people who think I should be over it – it’s been eleven years after all. Eric’s death taught me firsthand that we don’t get over it, that we are not supposed to get over grief. I love that man like a brother (present tense), and I have no where to put that love. So, I carry it as grief. Most of the time now I carry it gracefully, even cherish it. But this week it gets heavy.

When he died, I was able to do meaningful, important, and necessary things. Tasks that helped me metabolize grief into something sacred. Tasks that gave a bottom to my grief, a place it could land instead of descending in a free fall. I held vigil at his bedside. I was the funeral director, officiant, a pallbearer, and a mourner. I worked with the grief. This set up patterns which allow me to continue working with it.  Patterns that help me to work with other people’s grief too.

Eric’s death deeply affected the way I work as a funeral director. Like a subtle gnosis, it informs every interaction I have with the folks we serve. It is part of the foundation that I built Wildflower on. The flower in our logo is based on the Camas in this photo. A flower that is in bloom every year during this week.

Thank you, Eric. I’d rather have a beer with you though.