This week we couldn't help but notice a theme in some of your recommendations for BlogHer of the Week. As I started to read your posts a familiar, but long tucked away, feeling of grief arose, and I was grateful I wasn't in the office at that moment, because the tears came, then again, and again. I remembered how it felt to touch bottom, experience emptiness, and then see life slowly leak back into the picture, sometimes slowly, and other times with overwhelming, ersatz saturation like Technicolor.

Our favorite posts this week--all three of them--describe the return from numbness. For some, grief makes small things more pronounced and meaningful; for others the color is too intense to be real. 


For Lesbian Dad the return from grief is dream-like. A celebratory afternoon of tea at the Palace Hotel for her five year old becomes a scene from Hamlet, then A Midsummer Night's Dream, as her young daughter--unconcerned about appearances, much less gender roles--flits about like a fairy. She wonders why her "Baba" wouldn't wear her favorite suit, one that Lesbian Dad can wear today, for fear of disappointing someone long gone, and now remembered: her mother. Her daughter's "girliness" is so different from her, but familiar and now loved like a keepsake.

For Thordora at Spin Me I Pulsate, the intensification of meaning associated with grief comes in hindsight. The building where her mother died is nondescript, until she fills the space with memories:

"I remember instead, walking in the old stone downtown of this tiny city, her hand and mine together as we rushed across the street, her lips tight and her purse close. Or the soft warmth of her hips against my head as I leaned close in the kitchen. The curve of her body beside me, lazy Saturday’s on the brown couch, watching Hitchcock, her arms securing me to her."

Her mother didn't die at home, like her family wanted. The sadness behind this fact contorts reality and makes things right.

"Bereft, the house bent itself and wept. She had come home to die after all."

Matt of Matt, Liz and Madeline grieves in undercurrents following his wife's death after childbirth, when he realizes his daughter, Madeline, lives in the "after" and is entirely disassociated from the before.

"for the past


few weeks


i’ve been thinking


that maddy


has been pointing


and saying,


“mama”


to the photo


of her mom hanging


near the front door.


but on thursday i realized


that she points at,


and says,


“mama”


to every photo in


the house.

Grief is yielding, however, and won't allow such a separation. Small things, like Madeline's clapping hands, remind him of his wife's mannerisms.

"...someday i’ll make


fun of our daughter for


doing the


same things her


mom


used to do,


and remind her


that she knows


her mother better


than any of us ever


could have imagined."

Thanks to Matt, Thordora and Lesbian Dad for taking us, sometimes painfully, through grief, but with glimpses of what lies on the other side.

And thanks to everyone for continuing to send in your nominated posts.
Remember to nominate individual posts, not entire blogs, and keep them
coming! If you want to check out all the BlogHer of the Week posts, check out the BlogHer of the Week archive.

Jory

For Elisa, Jory and Lisa BlogHer Co-founders