The Answer to Grief
Poem + Reflection by Christine M. Crawford
I wrote this poem with dirt still wedged under my fingernails.
I was in a season of accumulated loss — the kind that doesn't announce itself with one clean, devastating moment but instead arrives in gentle rolling and sometimes violently crashing waves. Divorce. Displacement. Dreams that quietly died while you were busy trying to keep everything together.
On a rainy Sunday in April, I found myself at the big box store staring at a flat of begonias that nobody had bought. Orphaned, a little root-bound, reduced to a dollar a pot.
I bought all of them.
I drove home, changed clothes, and plunged my hands into the soil while the thunder rolled and the drizzle came down, and I cried in a way I hadn't let myself cry in months. No soft sniffles for me. This sobfest made an ugly cry look sexy. This was the kind of crying Rebecca Carrell would tell you is actually doing something — purging cortisol, making room for oxytocin, agreeing with the Holy Spirit that the world is not as it should be.
I didn't know any of that then. I just knew that something about putting trembling hands into cool, silky earth felt like the most honest thing I had done in a long time.
This poem came out of that afternoon.
I've shared it only once, to a small room of other writers. I have otherwise been sitting on it, waiting for the right place to put it. After my podcast episode with Rebecca Carrell on what it means to grieve well, running it here on the blog in tandem with that conversation felt like that place. Because everything she said in that chat took me back to my garden on that rainy Sunday. The permission to feel it. The biology of tears. The resurrection waiting on the other side of the grief you're willing to actually do.
The answer to grief is not getting over it. The answer to grief is grieving.
And sometimes that looks like planting begonias in the rain.
GRIEF GARDENING
The answer to grief is grieving
Working loss around with your tongue
Worrying injustice like a rotten tooth
in your frowning mouth
The answer to grief is bawling
in your beer, screaming in your car,
caressing rage like a summertime lover
until the ache bursts and relief gushes
The answer to grief is lifting
puffy eyes to winter cedars swaying
like gnarled skeletons dancing in the pontiac
wind, and finding beauty even there
The answer to grief is rescuing
orphaned begonias from the big box store
on a Sunday in April and plunging
your trembling heart and hands deep
into the cool silky soil. Nothing mends
like co-creating beauty while dodging
thunder and letting drizzle kiss
your already wet cheeks
The answer to grief is digging
Digging until you exhume your dignity,
until abundance wafts like a blossom
from its buried seed in the grave
of should-have-been because
The answer to grief is witnessing
your own resurrection.
-Christine M. Crawford
About the author
Christine M. Crawford
Christine is a poet, advocate, and theology geek who explores wild and wounded places through art, story, and humor. Fluent in both wonder and lament, Christine's work lives at the intersection of faith, nature, and the beautifully complicated human experience.
Her writing has been featured in publications such as Fathom, Devotion Magazine, Rehumanize International, Shout Outdoor Lifestyle Magazine, DTS Voice, The Coffee Cup Bible Study Series, and Texas Poetry Magazine. She has earned awards from the Texas Poetry Society and the Evangelical Press Association.
You'll find her on the porch of her creekside cottage in the Texas Hill Country with her two dogs (one sinner, one saint), savoring anything involving music, laughter, or words.
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