Journeying Through Grief
| By Kisha Bradley |
To the souls I grieve; Grandma Bradley, Papaw, Grandpa Gulley, Uncle Bill, Uncle Ed Jr., Aunt Tom, Uncle John, Aunty Ashley, Ashley Sparks, Connor Gerhaart, Jenna, Sam Harris, Meleyna Kistner, and to each foster sibling I never got to say goodbye to.
To Sam
I grew up seeing your smile, your anger, your morphing into life. Our foundations are made of the same stuff. Our personality, values and spirit are shaped from the same square pizzas, intolerant teachers and church concerts. Our spirits have grown together. I witnessed the shifting of friendship groups and your emerging talent and passions. I've experienced the way your constellation of stars orbits with my own. We shaped each other. We were complex networks of mycorrhizal living in symbiosis. We were gently and peacefully existing in the same space for decades. Slowly becoming.
So when I hear of your death, part of my constellation dims. My heart is heavy with mourning. A deep sadness washes over. My chest is heavy.
I’ve not always been able to put words to how death and grieving affects me. I silenced the depth of my sorrow. When their memories danced through my mind, I pushed the warm glow mixed with tears into a distant corner. I was not worthy of experiencing sadness in their memory.
The belittling of my own emotional wellbeing and the societal pressures to always be achieving left a swelling of grief untended. The souls of my loved ones were a wild garden of beautiful spirits pushing their roots into my foundations until I was forced to acknowledge the depths of their impact on my life and of course, the grief I would experience because of this loss.
To Uncle John
When I was 11 years old, my uncle, at just 17 years old, suddenly and unexpectedly died. It was a Sunday. He sang Amazing Grace at church that morning. I missed it because I was at the lake with my brothers. The smell of fishy water carried on the light breeze as we eagerly waited to jump in the water. I couldn’t wait to prove once more that I still held the record for holding my breath the longest.
All of this childish wonder was forgotten when I saw the end of the world as we knew it flash across my parents’ faces. To this day, I can’t think about the day he died without tears streaming. This was my first experience with death. Uncle John was like a big brother. He protected me from bullies and never missed a moment to pull a prank on me. But following his death, instead of processing my own grief, I looked after the emotions of those around me. I’d never seen my grandma, mum and aunty so sad. The wailing still haunts me to this day.
In August 2022, exactly 19 years and over 4,000 miles later, I set off exploring Offa's Dyke Path. On this 177-mile walk following the border of England and Wales, which took me sixteen days to complete, my pace of life was quieter and slower. I was going at the pace my nervous system felt comfortable operating at and as a result, my day dreaming was engaged. As I weaved this regional boundary, the grief hit me. With the warm sun on my skin, I felt the tears swelling behind my eyes. But this wasn’t sadness. It was my uncle’s memory and I felt his presence with me at that moment.
I wasn’t sad. I was overwhelmed with the emotions of his soul joining mine for the day. So, I welcomed the tears. They felt freeing. What would he think of his gullible, shy and goofy niece traversing the length of a country solo? Would he be interested in going on big adventures with me? What pranks would he play on me out here in the middle of nowhere? I could fully grieve without putting others' emotions above my own or needing to explain why I was suddenly emotional. I had the head space to let my soul roam free.
To Grandpa Gulley
In Florence Williams’ podcast, She Explores, A Safe Space: Mental Health and the Outdoors, she describes ‘The 3-Day Effect’. After three days in the wilderness, our perspective shifts and we begin to see the world in a different way. We’re able to engage in deeper thinking and can start to recover from grieving and trauma. It reminded me of the grief I connected with along the Offa Dyke’s trail, but when I reminisced, I realised that it was day seven (between Brompton Bridge and Buttington) when my uncle joined me. Why did I need seven days instead of the scientific three?
Williams explains that we can’t do two things at once. The mental stimulation of modern life doesn’t allow for our attention to sit long enough in one emotion to fully feel what we need to heal. During those first six days on the Welsh border, I was simply catching up on my emotional backlog.
I found day three to be the hardest. I’d walked seven hours up a gradual incline of the Black Mountains followed by two hours down a steep hill. My feet were in tatters. I cried several times that day. I cried with gratitude, pain, a feeling of incompetence, loneliness and finally, with joy when seeing the shower at the end of a day. This release of overwhelming emotions was how I finally processed the grief that required more attention than I could ever give it in my day-to-day life.
The next day, I woke up feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the next leg of my journey. But it was here, on day four, that my mum called and told me the news: my grandpa had died.
There, in the woods, I grieved his death fully in the moment. I held nothing back. What a relief it was not to put other people's emotions before my own or have my attention stolen by productivity, and to know that the 12 days ahead of me, held the promise of release.
Learning of nature’s power to hold and heal our grief and trauma has since transformed my relationship with it. While a three-day walk may not always be realistic, I’ve found that giving myself even 20 minutes outside is enough to improve my health and wellbeing.
So, on the morning I discovered that my school classmate passed, I immediately put my crocs on and headed for the nearest, most secluded path. I walked and walked and when I returned, I had gained understanding and had words to articulate my grief – words I share with you today. Through nature, I am finally able to heal.
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Quiet contemplation
Somber darkness
The sun's rays using my heart’s strings as anchorage to bring the morning,
The mourning
Tears just behind my eyes
Grief is strange.
Even stranger when you've lost touch,
when you’ve moved away from a small community,
from a place where everyone knows everyone,
your souls collide,
imprinting on each other,
No matter the depths of your relationship, you are connected.
