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Sacred Absence

A Pilgrimage of Love, Loss & Grieving Well

“Perhaps for now it can be enough to simply marvel at the mystery of how a heart so broken can go on beating…” 

  -Jan Richardson, Blessing for the Brokenhearted

Poem-Hello, Fear

Along with the trauma of losing my husband suddenly, I immediately began to experience fear and anxiety and they stayed for a long time, sometimes still faintly showing up. The day after Craig died, I went around the house making sure the doors were locked. I asked my nephew to take both cars to get the oil changed, because I was afraid I would forget and ruin the engines. I'm sure he must have wondered why, of all the things I could have been thinking about, this was at the top of the list. I was afraid to go to the grocery store...or anywhere, really. I just wanted to remain cloistered in my home, perhaps because I now realized in a huge way, how quickly life can devastatingly change.


It was such a foreign feeling and I could not understand where it came from. Everything I'd heard about grief up to that point, which admittedly was not much, did not include fear, but focused on sadness, loneliness, and anger, etc. I thought perhaps I was heading down some dark path and I would never be able to return. I thought I was losing it.


Eventually, though, through reading books and counseling, I came to understand how common it is. In fact, the first line of one of the first books I read, C. S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, reads: "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." Fear is a response to trauma...my presumptive world had been turned upside down and could no longer be trusted.


Eventually, fear faded...a little bit at a time...just like all the other intense emotions. But just like those waves of sorrow, or bursts of anger, fear can hit you like a bus. It's normal. It can be managed. It does not define us or our journey. And it asks some good questions that we must eventually process and find answers to.


HELLO, FEAR

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

from All the Honey











There I was, making tea in my kitchen,

when fear hit me like a school bus.

I didn’t need a scientist or therapist

to tell me it hurt.

I screamed: Arghh! I shouted, No!

 

But after smashing into me,

fear just opened the folding glass door

of the bus, yanked me on,

then plopped me into a green vinyl seat.

 

I’m scared, I said.

Yeah, fear said. ‘Cause I’m scary.

 

Yeah, I squealed, as the bus careened

through the couch, through

my bedroom, through the splintering

dining room table.

 

What if I lose everything? I said to fear.

Yeah, said fear, what if you do?

 

And who will I be when everything changes?

Yeah, said fear, who will you be?

 

Then fear opened the door

and shoved me off the bus

and I was standing again beside

the familiar green counter,

tea cup in hand, not a drop spilled.

 

Who will you be? fear shouted

from the half-open window

 

I took a deep breath,

not knowing how to respond,

then stepped into my life,

determined to live into the answer.

 


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© Cindy K Steffen  2023

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