It was during the pandemic that Tim & I started to include the First Harvest (Lughnasa, Lammas) in our celebrations of the eight festivals of the wheel of the year. Sunflowers were in full bloom at Buttonwood Farm in nearby Griswold, Connecticut and we decided to make going for a long walk through the huge field of them our tradition. Since moving to North Carolina three years ago I have been floundering, trying to figure out another way to mark the passing seasons. And now I’ve lost my companion.
For the first six months after Tim died I was in shock. As I’ve started coming out of that anesthetized state I’ve been finding ways to live with the reality of my new situation in life. He was the absolute center of my life. I won’t go on about how much I miss him but I have noticed something unique about this grief. When I lost my parents I still had my life with Tim to return to for comfort. Life returned to normal, nothing changed in my household or daily routines after they died.
It feels like “everyone” now has gone back to their own lives, in their own houses, where nothing in their daily lives, plans, and routines has changed. Not so for me. A friend pointed out to me that widows in Victorian times wore black for two and a half years and there seems to be a good reason for this. It may well take that long to adjust to this and it’s good to remind others that while they have a life to return to, mine is forever altered.
Tim expressed similar feelings to me when his brother died in our house, after living with us for the last nine months of his life. He said the grief hit him harder and longer than when his parents died. And he thought it had everything to do with the fact that his brother had been living so intimately under the same roof with him.
I’ve been making some comforting changes in my new life with myself. I went back to practicing yoga, osteoporosis be damned. I skip the spine-twisting moves and am feeling so refreshed, more grateful and at a peace. Tai chi was okay, but it just didn’t do much for me. Sometimes I realize that I am still grieving my loss of health and living by the sea, as well as missing Tim. I find comfort listening to great music on WMVY radio, streaming from Martha’s Vineyard. Doing familiar old jigsaw puzzles reduces anxiety very quickly for some reason.
There is a sunflower field down here, but the bloom time is off for Lughnasa, and it occurred to me the other day that it is in a city park. We never got there to see it and perhaps one deterrent was the idea of driving into the city just didn’t appeal, no feeling of connecting with Mother Earth the way the drive into the countryside did.
I’ve made my peace with celebrating the Wheel of the Year by myself, at least for most of them. I now have a jigsaw puzzle for each of the 8 festivals and movies for some of them. I watched Dancing at Lughnasa for the first time since 2020, when I first had the movie idea. And I plan to go ahead with my annual winter solstice gathering with family and friends.
The two things that have been the most difficult to find a way of doing without Tim are blogging and working on our family history. I hope to write about my halting progress with those endeavors in the coming months.
But for now, I’m sharing the puzzle I started on Lughnasa and finished this morning, as well as some pictures memories from past First Harvest trips to Buttonwood Farms. I will give myself this one journey around the Wheel of the Year, starting here, to celebrate with my puzzles and my memories. Then I will probably go back to simply the combining of paintings with words to mark the eight festivals.
We are the Flower — Thou the Sun!
Forgive us, if as days decline —
We nearer steal to Thee!
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #161)