Runes and Grief 15: Isa

Today's Rune is Isa. Ice, stillness, frozen, stasis.

Time can act strangely in times of grief; particularly when death is involved. There is a stillness that happens, right at the point of death, where time seems to stretch and maybe even stop. Oddly, this also can happen on hearing of the death. For a split moment at the start of the sentence, we are in one state, and by the end of it, quite another. Our mind can stop - refusing to move or understand.

Denial, some call it. I disagree, though that is something that often happens in the grieving process. I think this is a different thing. This is that space in which we have heard, but our minds have not yet adjusted or taken in the words. Things freeze and crack into a Before and After. We have left the world we knew, the world that held our loved one or friend in it. Now we are in a different world, disoriented. We peer at this world as if we are under ice - unheard, unhearing, watching it unfold not knowing if we can breathe or if we will float away with the riptide.

Shock, some call it, but it feels much deeper.

Nothing will be the same, though almost everything around us continues on. How can the world not know, we wonder - it doesn't make sense, maybe, but the feeling of stuck-ness is so a part of us in that immediate aftermath, that it seems unfair, and even cruel, to see things just Going On.

Sometimes there is an urge to keep everything as it was when They were alive. To leave the room, the cigarette, the cup of coffee alone to gather dust, burn itself out, or evaporate untouched. We try to hold onto that time of Before so hard. To freeze.

Some stillness is necessary, and healthy. Giving ourselves time to adjust is imperative, even when it feels like the idea of adjusting is a betrayal. Stay still a bit. But know, as with ice, melting will happen. Like water, things might seem formless for a while as it happens, until life flows into a new shape.