How could any of us survive our losses without each other?

The kodachrome of our life becomes black and white.

Disoriented in our grieving, time is distorted and so is our perspective. We are no longer the same person. So much has happened that we can’t begin to express it.

My soul feels the woundedness of your soul; there are no words.

And yet our dearest and closest friends try to comfort us with their quiet presence, sharing our pain, so that we do not feel so alone. In the embrace of their compassion, we try to find the courage to carry on.

The pain of loss can feel devastating.

Difficult and unexpected emotions arise. We find ourselves in a state of shock, surprised by anger that seems to come from nowhere. Disbelief, guilt and overwhelming sadness are atypical of us and yet become normal reactions. There is no right or wrong way to grieve.

Under the Wave by Lauren Groff

We are reading the short story Under the Wave by Lauren Groff.

It’s about the grieving aftermath of a tsunami-like storm, a wave that killed and destroyed the lives of many unsuspecting victims.

We meet a woman, who with her husband and son, are on vacation in a cottage a mile from the ocean. It’s a paradise of “the great herons, cormorants and the lit candles of ibis.”

She no more soothes her little son from a bad dream and gets back into bed when a wave, a wall of water, washes her husband and son away and they die while she miraculously survives.

In the immediate aftermath of the disaster the woman becomes dissociated from the world around her. Then she enters a dream-like state where she is barely present.

She is brought together with a young girl about her son’s age who is as lost and devastated as she is. She takes the child to replace her son. The young girl fully adopts the son’s identity.

I found the story intriguing. Something is going on under the surface that I can’t quite grasp. It feels more dangerous than even the aftermath of the tsunami, a place of impending disaster where dreams and reality are indistinguishable.

Family, Friends, and the Communion of the Saints by Roberta Bondi

The second piece is an essay by Roberta Bondi entitled Family, Friends, and the Communion of the Saints. She poses the question: How could any of us survive our losses without each other?

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