Writer, poet and artist Indigo Moon shares her creative reflection on grief at loss of loved ones and the natural world and the power of life to help us recover and stay connected with people, place and presence.
910 words: estimate reading time = 3.5 minutes
She smiles as I cradle her hand. Her expression peaceful, and ready to birth again into the whispers of life, into another place, another time. For a slight moment, my face reflects herself, a splendour version of an age where nature opened her heart and presented gateways to love, to joy, to contentment. There, echoes of voices once held crackle and pop against a radio static. She filters through the starless ocean, through the croaking, damp woods, until a warm, pulsating jewel begins to coalesce, inside the belly of a female robin. I sit alongside a lively river, observing a drifting of swans across the aqua shoal when a flicker of orange, of brown perches on a whorled, twining branch of hawthorn.
She’s here now, there to greet me, to hold my sadness in her song. A flutter, a turn, a whistle, I surrender to lamentation and listen to her tuneful embrace. A reassurance, a beckoning forward, that I must tread this life slightly differently, but not without speckles of your golden illumination. A virtue of truth, an embodiment of veneration, in all you were and all you’ll ever be.
I regard your flight as you glide onwards, abiding to another realm, not too far from here and whisper plausible promises, you know I’ll keep, in my bones, my breath, my heart.
Grief and growth in life
My grandmother passed away on the 9th of December 2024. She had developed pneumonia as a result of a chest infection and being 102 years old, her body wasn’t strong enough to fight it. Though I knew her passing would occur, when it eventually happened I wasn’t prepared for the enormity of pain I felt. She was like a mother to me and a dear friend. She understood me on a spiritual level and I knew her. My grief consumed the entirety of my being and I was unable to connect with my reality.
I retreated into nature, down to the local river and there encountered my grandma, in a much smaller form, but nonetheless I felt her spirit alive in this gorgeous little robin. I took a deep breath and surrendered to my grief. As my eyes became wet and heavy, I began to understand the nature of grief is the nature of life.
The emotional pain I feel tethers me to my grandma and to the natural world. When I hear of ancient trees being felled, rivers being polluted or a bird species declining, I feel the same gut-wrenching and inconceivable pain.
To recognise this within myself has provided me an opportunity to seek solace in nature’s balm. Where there is great loss, there is even greater gain. I feel myself transforming, evolving with my grief as I trundle through muddy paths, corridors with oak trees and holly.
I observed the robin out of the corner of my eye and tracked the shifting motion of the river’s water, in front of me. The never-ending cycle of water, blood and air. The miracle of this robin, to be here now, with me, comforted my intense anxiety.
It’s extraordinary how nature always seems to know how to love us when we need her too. This was my grandma. I notice her in the water, the reassuring calm of ripples and pleasant motion, the warmth of the returning sunlight after winter’s turn, the restorative energy of nature and how we are bidden to her cycle.
The recent bloom of snowdrops and purple crocuses in my grandma’s garden prompts me to take heed in my grandma’s legacy. The gentleness and unconditional love she offered is reflected in all of nature’s realms. She has expanded and become even more alive than when she was human. Spiritual beings we truly are.
My grandma always looked to flowers for guidance, comfort and joy. She would make flower arrangements and know the tapestries of her garden, the floristry knowledge she possessed was bountiful. I look to flowers for their innate wisdom and feel my grandma’s spirit, an almighty birthing of light and love, at my fingertips. In the petals and fragrance of a lily or a rose, she continues to teach and love me.
Her stubborn will to accompany me on my nature walks is a testament to how much she was loved and how much she loved others. So, when I next venture into an unknown forest or woodland or heathland – any land nature’s hands has crafted – I know my grandma will be there alongside me, beckoning me forward into the sunlight, where flowers bloom and where my joy permeates the sky.
Death is not finite. Nothing ends forever. Life continues to grow, to turn, to transform and all those spirits who now wander another land where mortals cannot tread, nature is the gateway for them to love their kin and present a metamorphosis of life.
Find more
Indigo has written for ClimateCultures on her experience of nature as a source of creative whispers, which can blossom into art and poetry collection, and a space for us to exist outside our human story: Creative Whispers: Nature’s Power to Wellness.
Indigo Sapphire Moon