Not long after my dad died in a plane crash, I went to the land to grieve.
It must have been winter by then. I remember the cold, the clouds, and the dew that covered everything. The whole landscape seemed to reflect my grief back to me. I had gone there carrying something terribly painful, and somehow the morning seemed to be carrying it too. I wandered and wept, stopping now and then to take photographs. I remember being struck by how beautiful everything was, even in its dreariness. There was something poetic about it. I wasn't looking for beauty that morning, but I kept finding it.
One of the photographs was of a spiderweb suspended between dried stems, its delicate threads covered in tiny drops of dew. Against the dark trees and winter grasses, the web was suddenly visible in all its intricacy. I wonder whether I would have noticed it at all on another morning.
There was no escaping my grief. I felt abandoned. Betrayed. My dad was gone, and the circumstances of his death made the loss all the more painful. I didn't try to make sense of it that morning or find some greater purpose in what had happened. I just let myself feel it.
And yet, something else was happening alongside the sorrow.
I could see beauty. I could feel wonder. I could recognize something of myself in the landscape around me. It was as though the usual separation between my inner world and the world outside had grown thinner. Grief, if we allow it, can thin the veils between worlds. I was completely immersed in the pain, but somehow I also knew I wasn't my grief. And although my dad's life here had ended, I had a deep sense that he had not ended.
In the days and months that followed, there were winks and nods. Little signs and coincidences that felt like acknowledgments. I can't explain them all, and I don't particularly need to. They were meaningful to me, and they came at a time when I needed them. I think back to that morning sometimes, and to the photographs I took while wandering through the cold.
I didn't emerge from the experience transformed. I didn't find an answer to why my dad had died or discover some wisdom that made his absence easier to bear. I was grieving, and I allowed myself to grieve. I didn't become anything other than my grief. But I was also noticing. Even in the midst of tremendous pain, I could still see the beauty and poetry of the world. The two experiences existed together, neither diminishing the other.
I think that is what stays with me most about that morning.
The dew hadn't created the spiderweb. It had only made visible what was already there.
