41 Lost in Grief
I have often noticed how illnesses seem to have a psychological as well as a physical basis, sometimes it appears that the poor health of the body is a direct result of a psychological imbalance. After returning to the centre my health didn’t improve as I had hoped, even though the immediate conditions of the problem had been left behind – indeed rather than getting better it was evidently becoming worse, with the cold turning into flu, and then at times I was also getting fever.
Since arriving I had been kept rather busy and all my energy and attention was being spent on adjusting to the new surroundings, meeting with people, and so on. In the evenings with the teacher away I had been asked to lead the discussions, and I was also giving instruction to newcomers. With all this and the exhaustion from the illness itself I often found myself sleeping at odd hours and resting whenever I could.
When the illness had dragged on for some time and showed no sign of abating I realised I had to take a break and investigate into what could be the reason for its continuation. When I looked again and looked deeper I saw I was grieving but had failed to recognise it before, and that grief having found no space to be in consciousness had found expression bodily, and the aches and pains were a reaction to the deep distress which had gone unacknowledged.
The grief that had been planted there on my return had perhaps found fertile ground, and I now see that around the focus of one death many others had found a place. It is not only suppressed or repressed emotions that can cause one problems at a later time, but also those that have found no adequate expression.
This was the first time I had been in the centre in the dry season, and it was quite a revelation to be able to go for long walks round and about. During the monsoon, of course, it’s not only the rain that keeps one housebound, but also the leeches, and the impossibility of traversing the roads, overgrown as they are with all manner of vegetation. One day, after I had settled in, I went for a walk up past the reservoir which lies in a depression on top of the mountain. There is a jungle on one side of this lake, and as I walked I saw a couple of locals emerge from the undergrowth, and I asked where they had come from and whether I could also make my way through, and they said it was possible.
I started to follow the path, it led initially through the grasses, which were soon up around my head, and it became difficult to see where I was going. However, it seemed there was a path and one presumed that it led somewhere and so I pressed on. After a while the path became more and more hard to discern, and it was a matter of choosing one way over another on the basis of very little information. At one point I left the grasses and made my way into the jungle proper and started to descend the hillside.
I tried for a while to remember which way I had come, but it was not possible to recall every twist and turn I had made, and I soon gave up trying. The path, if there had ever been one except in my own imagination, soon disappeared altogether, and the undergrowth with its wild creepers and uncontrolled vegetative growth was difficult to get through – it was a matter of ducking under this, and scaling that, or pulling some of the vegetation aside in order to proceed, and the peculiar thing was it always looked like there was a path just ahead, but when one arrived it had, like the horizon, simply shifted away from one.
Many and mysterious are the hoots and whistles and other noises one hears in a jungle, I could put a name to some of the creatures making these sounds but not to others. Curiously there’s not a lot to be seen in a jungle – barring the greenery, that is – it is simply too dense, but I did catch a glimpse of a paradise flycatcher who seemed to be totally at home in the undergrowth, shooting through the entanglements after his prey. His black and white ribbon like tail, which must be all of three times the length of his body, following him around in streamer fashion, and one wondered how it didn’t get caught up in the unruly thickets.
One of the odd things about being lost in a jungle is that you are constantly aware that you may be only a few metres away from open spaces and easy walking, but still it may be that you never find your way out. Eventually, as retracing my footsteps was impossible, I decided instead on heading in what I knew was roughly the right direction, which meant ascending the mountain once more. It was a difficult way to go but the strategy worked and I made it out into the tall grasses once more, and from there I found my way back to the path upon which I had started. It had been quite an adventure.
The sky around the mountains glows tangerine and orange, as the sun, a radiant red, emerges beneath the heavy dark blue clouds which form near the horizon. Above, the sky is deep blue with beautiful and delicate wispy white clouds, which the air currents at different levels are driving in opposite directions. As the sun sets, so the sky changes colour imperceptibly until it is a luminous carmine.
There are two fires burning on the distant hillsides tonight, in fact every evening now there are fires to be seen though we’re only a short way into the dry season. Echoing across the valley there is the sound of crows trilling and whooping at each other, and now the doves, who have been mournfully wooing their mates since dawn, finally settle down for the night. From the workers’ houses below comes the sound of a child crying. Night has arrived once more.
The body can act as the storehouse of the unconscious, and sometimes illness may just be the unconscious finding expression in the only way it can. The grief continued and so did the pains, and on occasion I was overwhelmed at the sorrow of it all. I suppose the real depth of it lay not in the death, but in the fact that it was so untimely and so unnecessary. It was not the first time I had known someone undergo this fate, dying, one feels, more from lack of love than anything else, and it was agonising to realise that the world can be so unjust.
And then someone to whom I had confided my grief asked: are you not angry? And of course I was, and one more emotion came to the fore. As these emotions were acknowledged so the physical response eased, and the pains subsided and the breathing became easier. It’s a curious thing when one is overcome with emotion how it seems to pervade all aspects of one’s life, and one’s relationships, acts and speech, are all tinged with this background. It even manages to colour the past, and I could see behind all the joy and happiness of the last year, behind the peace and inner stability, while I marvelled at the wonder and beauty of life regained, there was a silent cry on the lips of a child who was not able to protest at the fate that was slowly overtaking her, and it seemed that nobody, least of all myself, had heard that cry, and so the silences had grown longer and longer until in the end there were no more cries, silent or otherwise.