The Liminal Space of Grief
If I’m quiet and interested, I can feel a ball of pressure in my chest. It could be described as heavy — that would be a familiar association. Looking out across the landscape of my recent past, I could easily interpret the heaviness as sadness and I would get a lot of agreement from people. After all, my mother died less than two months ago, and my beloved dog Smokey three months before that. There has been death in my life recently, that fact is true.
Beyond that, I wonder how much of my experience is the sanctioned story of my tribe. People and pets die. You must be grieving, and that grieving is about sadness.
This morning, though, I’m interested. What is this pressure actually? Initially, I’m a curious observer: it has a weight that’s heavier than the other sensations in my body. Closing my eyes, it appears like slowly swirling smoke with a hollow center and a bit of faint sparkly light.
My curiosity quickly draws me into the experience in my body. With no expectation or agenda, I find myself in the center of a significant amount of energy. Suddenly I understand why I woke up the previous morning in a state of near panic but not knowing why. It was just energy. The next realization is that this must be the energy that is released when a person dies. Maybe it’s the same energy that is present when a person is born. In any case, it’s a lot of energy, and a childlike delight at its discovery is shattering my previous notions of grief.
I feel as though I have discovered a new continent. First I test my discovery with friends who have been at the bedside with a significant loved one at the time of their death. After receiving validation, I rush to my computer to report my findings. This is where the story stalls. Perhaps once you deem something significant, it creates a orce field around itself. Distractions seem to have been popping up endlessly.
Yet here I am, writing at last. With a rare ferocity, I’ve carved out this time and continue to defend it against those distractions. Presently, I’m keenly aware of how little time and permission we give ourselves to grieve. I’m not talking about sobbing for hours. It’s more about the capacity to be still enough to feel and experience the mystery and magic of the primordial space, a type of liminal space, that arrives at the moment consciousness enters or exits. It deserves its due. Then, perhaps, if we give it that due, we could become even more fully human, slowly, gently, like what it takes to be born.
