sketching my way through

a path to meeting grief

This week, we are doing the impossible. We are saying “goodbye” to my Dad.

My experience with losing my Dad can’t be summed up in words. For someone who writes for a living, my cursor blinks back at me on a blank page.

It’s going to take time for words to make their way out of the embedded memories that lie within my being, to flow into my veins, and somehow be transmuted into keys clicking on the keyboard.

The other world is hard to conceptualize, and my Dad, who never took to computers very much, I think, would have much preferred that I remember it on a typewriter.

A few days after his death, my mother, sister, and I were all together, and I knew I needed space to process and grieve and feel my Dad on my own. He had fought a hard and long battle with cancer, and while his death wasn’t a complete surprise, you never can be prepared to lose your Dad.

I did lots of walking, sitting, lying in bed, looking at the sky, gazing at sunsets, hiking, crying, and shell collecting — the things I did with him, I still tried to do. The initial wave of grief after you lose someone is so big, the tsunami that ensues wipes you out completely. And, as weird as it sounds, I also had an adrenaline rush from being with him for the 48 hours until he passed. Like giving birth, my brain took over, my body sprang into action as I watched and held his body going through the very natural and beautiful process of transitioning.

Being in the room with him changed my life completely. Perhaps this will find its way to a typewriter in the future, but for now, I have learned to communicate my grief through little pictures that I draw, capturing his essence.

I have followed Samantha Dion Baker for some time now, on a whim from a friend. And little did I know what a saving grace her work would be for me this past year.

Sketching, it turns out, allows you to say what you need to say without saying anything. It can capture a moment, a feeling, and encapsulate a memory in a way that words simply can not.

It’s not supposed to be perfect, but I think that is the best part. Where writing and editing refine a book or work, sketching in one sitting allows me to immerse myself in the memory instead of thinking too much about it. I get to feel my way into the grief, let it pass through my whole body, which, of course, is the only way to process just about anything.

In the sketch above, my Dad’s neck is more how I remembered it when he died, and not the young, strong version you see in the picture. I didn’t do that on purpose, but when I look back at the drawing, it makes perfect sense to me that this is what came forward. It’s the young and the old, the Dad who was strong enough to run that race was still with him when he was holding my hand in his bed, taking his last breaths.

I have had to find many healthy coping strategies to ease into my grief, and sketching has become a main avenue. It’s true that the waves of grief take over, but I find if I am in practice of meeting it out at sea, I can willingly get on the boogie board and ride it in, instead of being thrashed under her swirling swells.

xo

B.

P.S. Samathan Dion Baker has a few sketch books that help you get acquainted with her practice, including a new one called Draw Your Adventures. I am taking it on my trip and hope to sketch my way through an impossible and beautiful week. You can find her Substack here.