Once upon a time I trusted my Mind and Body entirely, to carry me through every challenge. To have me secure a place in Medical School and then find a job in the UK and so on. To give in to nothing. To believe these two things were everything I needed to handle anything at all.
But when Saagar died, the Mind and Body were not enough. The Mind tortured me by asking terrible, unanswerable questions and passing harsh judgements on others and me. The Body was taken over by gravity, just about managing to drag itself around.
Something else was deeply needed.
There wasn’t a way to define it, but it was something like a benevolence, a gift, a gentle wave arising from the heart of the Universe – an unconditional embrace that came from a place past the measurements of deserving and non-deserving.
Grace arrived full and empty. It came when it came, unbidden. Unexplainable. Unrecognized at first. A mystery, that was and is perhaps never not there. Beyond a kind blessing and an earnest prayer, it bypassed all religious imaginations. It fell like cloudburst on parched Earth.
Grace came in the guise of a few words that soothed my nerves or as a centuries-old poem, connecting me to the experience of someone long gone who had lived and felt the same. It came as an occasional deep breath that left me completely at peace with the world, as time and attention from someone who understood, as a hand on my shoulder, a warm hug, a good night’s sleep. This thing was essential to life, a gentle breeze that blows through the house of grief.
It prompted my heart to say yes to an invitation to a cup of coffee with a friend, to a film or a book recommendation, to a walk in the park, to letting the sun soften all the muscles in my neck and back, to reciprocating a smile in a stranger’s eyes.
In the Circle of Remembrance, we remember Grace as that special something that holds us. Even though we can’t define it, we know it supports us and we acknowledge it with gratitude.