“HeartSpun Talk from the Crucible of Experience”©
From the life of Ken Matthies - Author, Poet, Real Life Storyteller
How often in the midst of your loss, grief and bereavement have you found yourself feeling as though you were about to drown in sorrow, not knowing what direction to reach out to in order to find the safety of something to hang on to and not go completely under from the pain of it all?
Sometimes Mother Nature provides us with examples of her events that parallel our own real life experiences of loss of a loved one; examples that in their own way we can not only see and learn from but can also take a huge measure of comfort, strength and healing from.
Because if you notice, Mother Nature always restores and heals the land she has laid waste to with her catastrophic events – maybe just as a way to show us mortals that we too will eventually find restoration and healing from the pain of our individual devastation.
I’m seeing an example of her handiwork in my own geographical back yard this year, and I can’t help comparing its inevitable progress to my own journey of healing from loss, grief and bereavement. Perhaps you’ll be able to identify with and find help from this example yourself.
The huge area of interconnected lakes I live among is under flood warning conditions this summer resulting from the melt waters of a huge winter snow pack, as well as unusually high rainfall levels and the global warming effects of melting mountain glaciers. Some homes built too close to these lakes have already been filled with the floodwaters and the owners are facing grievous loss.
No wonder I find myself comparing this event to the floodwaters of my own grieving which have risen and swirled their torrents around my life in both past and present years.
The sudden death of my daughter five years ago was like a flash flood which comes in quick and instantly wipes out everything you ever cared about or thought to be certain in this life. No other event of life can be as shattering and utterly devastating as this one.
Or there are the slow floods like the one in my own area this year, which creeps up exponentially on you each day as the one you love dies just a little bit more in tune with the rising waters around you – just like the long and lingering death two years ago of my adoptive Native mother which is referred to in the next story in this article series.
One you can semi prepare for, and the other takes your feet right out from under you – but both of them leave you floundering in the floodwaters of your grievous loss.
Mother Nature provides the healing answer in both cases, showing us that the high and raging waters (of grief) will recede in their time; that our (floundering) feet will again touch the security of dry land to stand upon, and that new and healing seeds of life will spring forth (from the pain of our experience) to flourish upon that land (of former loss, grief and bereavement).
She shows us that even in the midst of destruction (and death) the inevitable healing of the land (and of our broken souls of grief) will follow, just as surely as we know that all floodwaters must recede in their time.
There are powerful lessons of life and healing to be found in her examples. Look for them in your own world of hurt around you, and know that they too provide a sure and certain guide to the growth and progress of your own journey out of the floodwaters of your grieving.
I’m finding healing in her examples and hope that you will too.
For almost forty years of his life Ken Matthies has been a writer and chronicler of life expressed in poetic form, following the family tradition laid down by his grandfather before him.
Faced with the dramatically life altering experience of his helicopter pilot daughter’s sudden death in 2002 he has grown to also become a literary author of true events based on his own life. Though grief opened his literary doors it is the Light of Love and Memories supplying the fuel of inspiration to write through them.
As a second-chance dad given the opportunity to verbally share his life stories with his newly rediscovered daughter it was she who told him that she believed him to be a ‘worthy man’ after having heard them, and who encouraged him that they should be shared in written form beyond her own life – not yet knowing as she said it that she was soon to leave him behind. As a bereaved father and writer learning how to live life again in the Light of his own Love and Memories of his daughter, he writes those stories now as a testament to her belief and faith in their value.
His full length book entitled "How to Survive the Death of a Child - A Father's Story of Healing Light" was the first of these stories which he wrote in the Light of those Love and Memories.
He lives in the solitude and grandeur of a tiny southern Yukon village with his Tlingit native wife Skoehoeteen and the successor to their venerable old Tahltan bear dog Clancy Underfoot, who now happily awaits them at the Rainbow Bridge in Doggy Heaven. She’s a new female puppy named Hlinukts Seew which means ‘Sweet Rain’ in the Tlingit language, a wonderful phonetic variation in memory of Clancy’s name who was also called C.U. for short. It’s a good place to tell those stories from.
You can read more of Ken's writings and find his Amazon Kindle book at www.kenmatthies.com.