A Long Hiatus; Coping with Grief

It's been a long time.  I took a break from gridding, for a time I even took a break from Reiki. Hell, at times it felt like I was taking a break from life.

My last blog entry was the Celtic cross grid, in December  of 2019, honoring my sister's life and soul departure.  Lee died a few days before Thanksgiving 2019, the day before my niece's birthday, and of course Christmas followed not long after.  Even though she had been sick and suffering for so long, it was still terribly hard on all of us.

Three months after Lee's death, my oldest nephew Mike suddenly passed away without warning.  His wife discovered the tragedy when their alarm clock went off in the morning.  The wounds in our hearts were torn open with fresh grief - and shock over the cruelty of it.  He was only 57 and had the world by the tail - good job, good paycheck, he and his wife planning an early retirement with lots of travel.  He took vacations, he worked hard, but he was sure to live it up, too.  Mike had tons of friends, a large extended family, and was the beloved life of the party wherever he went.  Suddenly - shockingly - gone. There was no silver lining here, no "at least he is no longer suffering."  It was a case of "he's suddenly no longer enjoying life."

Meanwhile the coronavirus is brewing.  At this point, it's still a Chinese phenomenon, a few cases in California. No worries, it will be gone by spring. (Um - yeah.  Though of course by this point, the dotard also assures us ultra violet rays and injecting bleach will cure it, but this is an attempt to get back on a healing journey so no more about that.)

In any event, I put off self nurturing for many months. I only got back to journalling last week.  I also needed to take a break from Reiki.  I don't know if it was the grief, or fatigue, but despite the time, energy and expense that I have put into my Reiki training and practice, I just couldn't do it anymore.  I brought it up in a Reiki group and someone told me I could just be experiencing "the winter of my spirituality."

It wasn't until weeks after my nephew Mike's sudden death that I began to think about Reiki again, and slowly tune in here and there. It's hard to do that when you are angry at the universe.  The universe took our loved ones from us - but it is also the source of good, the source of healing.  A hand that takes and a hand that gives.  I need to strive to find the good energy again. It is a slow process.

During my Reiki hiatus I did not grid or even hold a crystal. I put them all away. I had left Lee's memorial crystal grid up longer than any other, but it was no longer communicating with me so I cleansed those stones and packaged them all up in oh, I think middle of March.  With that ceremony, I also packaged up my heart and shut myself down to all energies, healing and otherwise.  But an effort to tune everything out can backfire.  When you try to close off all energy and lock your heart in a box, somehow the dark energy finds the cracks. Like attracts to like, and the dark energy nefariously seeps in until you are just a black hole.

Early in March is when COVID-19 hit us hard.  There was no more denying it.  No more watching people in China on the news and thinking oh whatever, these people are whacked with their masks.  Now WE are cowering behind our masks.  I was furloughed from my job and it seems most of the world is out of work, temporarily or permanently.  Or, other sectors of the population are being worked to death and exposed to risk all day.  Every day I was tuning in to Governor Andrew Cuomo's press briefings on the status of COVID in New York.  The mounting infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths became a grisly obsession.  "Flatten the curve!"  "Stay home!" "We're all in this together!"  NO!  STOP!  Just stop.  There's no toilet paper, there are no canned peas, someone bought all the gluten free bread in the store!  I'm afraid to leave the house, I'm afraid to lose my job, I'm afraid to lose my health insurance.  Now the furloughs turn into layoffs.  Bankruptcies, overflow morgues in refrigerated trucks, more dead in three months than over ten years in Viet Nam!!!

no ... No ... NO  Make it stop.  We are NOT in this together.  Bullshit. People who hoard toilet paper and food are in it for themselves. Companies firing all their employees are in it for themselves.  Feel good celebrity interviews about how they're coping with quarantine, exhorting us to just stay home.  Very easy to stay home in your mansion with no lack of health care or income source.  Not so easy for the rest of us. Commercials masquerading as public service announcements ... touching scenes of medical workers, communities pulling together, "we are strong."  Then you realize it's a Hefty garbage bag commercial.  A disgusting, opportunistic marketing ploy.

Just make it stop.

Anyway - situations change.  The Universe is not static, it is dynamic and electric. It may be naive and ridiculously stupid of me, but I feel a rebirth stirring. I feel the spark of Reiki energy again.  Sometimes I smile again.  I keep the news off.  It is spring, I sit in the backyard and listen to the spring birds.  I joined a morning meditation group and we sit together on Zoom.  I get better at tuning out the humming, mechanical clanking of the black hole, most of the time.  I was able to return to work, and some sense of normalcy.  Now I need to divert my negative thoughts and energy and turn it positive, to pray for the people who need to get back to work, to a paycheck and health insurance, for kids to go back to school, for medical breakthroughs so that we can resume living again. Or at least living with reduced fear of the virus; a manageable fear.

Please, Universe - get us through this.  Please show us your good and healing self.