TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

During the hardest times in my life, I found comfort and hope in a lot of different places. I found it in art: in books, in poems, in music, and in films. I found it in philosophy and spirituality, particularly in the Buddhist teachings of Pema Chödrön and Thích Nhất Hạnh. I found it in long walks, in  meditation, and in exercise. And yes, in traditional therapy. 

But what comforted me the most and gave me the most hope was community: the family and friends and neighbors who rallied around me. The kind people who delivered meals, who invited me out for coffee (or drinks, or dancing, or live music, or even rollerskating)! The people who showed up, listened, and loved me unconditionally.

Research shows this to be true: nothing is more integral to your happiness than the quality of your relationships. A famous Harvard study “proved that embracing community helps us live longer, and be happier.” We need people we can look out for, and who are looking out for us. 

When people show up for us, it’s lifechanging. But eventually, the meals stop arriving, and maybe the calls and texts and notes slow down, and life gets a little quieter. There is no expiration date on grief—when you lose someone you love or go through something particularly devastating, you live with it for the rest of your life. Even if it doesn’t occupy your every thought, even if it fades a little more into the background of your days instead of being in the foreground, it’s there.

Today’s poem captures that time in the speaker’s life—a time of grief when life goes a little quiet after a flurry of support and care. It makes me think about ways to continue supporting the people in my life who I know are still hurting because of the magnitude of what they’ve lost. It makes me think that I could be a more responsive, more steadfast friend, and it makes me want to be that person.

Congratulations! Your Grief Is About to Stop Being Relevant!
by Bridget Bell

It’s been months since a neighbor rang the doorbell
with a quiche or lentils or a bag full of fat purple grapes
doomed to rot into mush on the counter

the mail slot silent, the last card long ago shoved
through its brass mouth and you are thankful
in a way because the worst is over

your beloved is dead and yes, you know, there are things that are worse
than death  but still you keep thinking of another line
but you can’t find the right page

somewhere in the rural dust of Dorothy Allison’s 
Bastard Out of Carolina  where a daughter’s husband has died
and the mother tells her, face held in her hands,

this is your face now
this is the oldest your face will ever look, you look
at the photos of his face, you bone-pick them bare,

you’d eat the pictures if it’d make him
a permanent part of you
and the world has moved on.

"Congratulations! Your Grief Is About to Stop Being Relevant!" by Bridget Bell. Used by permission of the poet.