It’s Groundhog Day and the toothy little beast has predicted whether spring will keep us waiting or not. Every year, without fail Seb and I would watch this film on this day and share the same jokes that never got old. I’d comment on the quilt in Mr. Connors’ hotel room and we would both try and say the word “poetry” in the style of Andie MacDowell. Phil was never likeable but Bill Murray always was; the manipulative swine. Each morning I have woken up to the same and found myself waist deep in a puddle and it’s a doozy. I don’t need a rodent to tell me what’s coming.
Jo, you’re just going to have to channel the cheer.
Six months in. I’m still finding it hard to get out of bed. My mind seems like it is either hyper alert and poised for battle or mostly absent- dragging behind the pace of everything else. My appetite is weird again. I just want spring because a change in nature isn’t a decision that I have to make- it will just happen to us. I would like to sit outside, I want to see if I can attract more birds to the garden- I might order some ladybirds by post once things have really warmed up- they help don’t they? I’m going to plant a meadow and enjoy the hum of the bees. I wonder how the trees will change this year; still not quite far enough along to fruit.
I have a friend who is not afraid to reframe things for me, it feels like we are writing an essay on what’s going on- we are working on our skills to persuade, argue, advise; and it helps. Writing for purpose. In grief what I need most is for folk to stand alongside. Oftentimes I feel like an emotional drain and when I am flanked I can attempt the thought that what has happened is not an inconvenience or a burden. It is an event in my life and there is enough scaffolding around my friendships to hold us in this moment.
I wonder if I will be able to be a good support when the inevitable loss of life befalls the people I love. I hope that I will be able to put aside the details of my experience but carry the empathy forward and the lessons I’ve learned on how individual grief is. I still have so much more to say about it- words that convey the devastation and abandonment, the different points of anger, the way in which I feel cheated of the expected tomorrow.
In the midst of all this, I have seen just how much love there is. When you’re in love, the kind of regular, dutiful, comforting love; you don’t look for it anywhere else. You might see it every so often but it’s not needed to sustain you; because you have love at home. When that love disappears in an instant the space remains and that is where the pain is really felt. As time has passed the space Seb left has changed shape and is inhabited by a cast of many. This love is an ensemble rather than a two hander.
In Groundhog Day, Phil Connors gets to stuff things up so many times- he learns his lesson and he gets rewarded. His redemption isn’t heaven but another shot at life. I think this means that everyone deserves another go; I think I do.