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Please share meaningful art, poetry, dance, and music that touches upon memories of a loved one or collective grief and loss.

Heesun Kim, Grieving Space, 2007, Oil painting on canvas, 48″x24″

Ayumi Tanaka, Wish You Were Here, 2013-2015, Gelatin silver print 

At times in my day-to-day life, I find myself stumbling over reminders of days gone by. Partly formed of memory rise up from a forgotten abyss within, surrounding me like a powerful fragrance and rocking my emotions to the core. In these moments, I am seized with the desire to gather and collect, to retrieve what has been lost and weave it into something whole.
Ryan Richey, Grief makes me tired, 2016, Oil painting on canvas, 18"x20"

"Grief makes me tired. I slept all summer".
That's what my mom told me after her mom passed. I feel the same way when I've experienced grief. I'm a lot like my mother in this regard.
Tobi Kahn, Auro: the art of nature, 2018, Acrylic on wood

In the face of the world’s instability, I want to reveal those elements that are transcendent, not the evident reality but the inherent vitality that makes it possible. These images transmute the darkness of nature without denying its power, revealing a sanctuary in a still-struggling world, tension continually released into serenity. 

You are the River: Tribute to Satie's Gnossienne No.1
Lyrics and voice: Juliet Rohde-Brown, instruments and mixing: Daniel Siuba

Through the wound
A dream
Awakens
Child inside of you
Your ablution
Cleanses for her chant
Of mercy
Feel the spheres
They’re ever turning
Through this cosmic tide
You are yearning
Inward seeking
All is unfolding
Unfolding
You’re the River
Rumbling nearer
You’re the water’s flow
You’re Sophia
Shedding tears
For all
For all
Susanna Coffey, Tina Brown’s Pool, NOLA 12/23/18, 2018, oil on panel, 6″ x 8″
Kathryn Holt
 As a New Mother During the Pandemic
A friend and shamanic practicioner helped me identify a rosebush in my garden as a guide and a companion. The rosebush has become a trusted ally and source of wisdom and support, especially during trying times. The poem below is dedicated to my rosebush and to all who bring their grieving to the Grieving Tree.


My Rosebush
By Jan Weetjens

You, my rosebush, growing wild
Rooted in abundance
Sucking life into your roots
Unconcerned by passing winds

You freely give away
The splendor of your flowers
Miracles of color and of
Intricate design

Your thorns spike out
As if to message
Your refusal to be defined
By scarcity

Your delicate scent
So tender and fierce
Penetrates my soul
And perks my ears

You say: listen to your heart
Follow its calling
Wherever it may lead
Know that all is given

No need to cling nor
Heed the passing winds

Just surrender
To abundance
Sooyeon Ahn, Forest Remembers, 2019, 100cm x 200cm, Mulberry Paper Print 

The 4.3 was massive genocide which is notable for its extreme violence; between 14,000 and 30,000 people, approximately ten percent of Jeju's population, were killed from 1948 to 1954. This project is about mourning loss and sorrow resulting from the massacre while capturing Jeju's forest as a witness of the 4.3. 
By Daniel Tanh

The day of the unicorn
Mourning your magic
Morning rain in Central Park
Where you felt the most

Loss of reality
Lost in hopelessness

I wish it weren't so

Systems that be
Power all around

Disabling
Maddening

Taking flight
Fighting the good fight

You're still next to me.
Thank you, B.
Erik Lawrence
Sound and vibration are a comfort to us all. And it is my honor to share my work, which is inspired by the Grieving Tree project. This touches me deeply because my friend Heesun Kim was one of the first to recognize in me my connection with music and deep feeling from the heart of the listener who is being touched. Please feel free to visit this music at Soundcloud and use it for your meditation: https://soundcloud.com/hipmotism/grieving-tree. You can find other meditations on my YouTube page: Erik Lawrence Sound Sanctuary. Be AT Peace, Be WITH Peace, Be IN Peace brothers and sisters. 
By Peter Dunlap

Rilke helps:
It feels as though I make my way
through massive rock
like a vein of ore
alone, encased.

I am so deep inside it
I can’t see the path or any distance;
everything is close
and everything closing in on me
has turned to stone.

Since I still don’t know enough about pain,
this terrible darkness makes me small.
If it’s you, though—

press down hard on me, break in
that I may know the weight of your hand,
and you, the fullness of my cry.
Evergreen Susan Hericks
This is the poem Evergreen read at the Grieving Tree opening ceremony.

Singularity
By Marie Howe
 
               (after Stephen Hawking)

Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were?

so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money—

nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone

pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept.

For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you.   Remember?
There was no   Nature.    No
 them.   No tests
to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf    or if

the coral reef feels pain.    Trashed
oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;

would that we could wake up   to what we were
—when we were ocean    and before that
to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not

at all—nothing

before we came to believe humans were so important
before this awful loneliness.

Can molecules recall it?
what once was?    before anything happened?

No I, no We, no one. No was
No verb      no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with

is is is is is

All   everything   home
Christen Weimer, In honor of MS. B, watercolor on paper
A speech at the Grieving Tree opening ceremony by Mary Watkins


We give thanks for each and every gesture of love and support offered between loved ones and between strangers during this pandemic period: the nurse who held the hand of someone dying, the neighbour who helped distribute food at the food bank, the young friend who checked in on an elderly person living nearby. There were millions and millions of acts, small and large, that wove a tapestry of support and care.
 
But, sadly, in addition to our grief for the loss of particular loved ones, we also grieve for the unnecessary losses born of greed, neglect, selfishness, and racism. We grieve that due to economic and racial injustice, many had to confront the pandemic at much closer range due to their race, their ethnicity, and their socioeconomic class, while others enjoyed a relative safety from harm.
 
We grieve that even the threat of a worldwide pandemic could not spur us to adequately mobilize to release the grip of greed on us—to free vaccines to belong to the people of the world so that they might be protected. We grieve that even the threat of a worldwide pandemic could not adequately mobilize us to fulfil demands for equity and equality.
 
We grieve that so many are suffering from the loss of their work, their livelihood, even their homes. We grieve that so many are putting their children to bed hungry; so many have lost a safe place for their children to sleep.
 
May the tapestry of care and support that was created by this pandemic be woven into the pattern of our common fabric. May we acknowledge our collective grief, our collective remorse, and our shame at our failures to extend care and support to so many and may this acknowledgment be a step toward our reparative actions now and in the future.
 
Voice
By Emily Chow-Kambitsch

The seas
the woods
the suns
all the days
glowing reflections
in your eyes,

your ancestors hidden
in the folds of your hands,
the lost trades and stories,

yes, I miss those in ways that reach
into the seams of memory
that wakes
in my throat.

But the voice
uniquely yours,

I remember the way
it touched the wind
like fingerprints
in sand,

the way it filled rooms
and swept the fear
from the threshing floor
of my mind,

the way it rose to shake the sky
like a hymn
the way it dwells, still
echoing in
my heart.

No other sound is like that.

No other sound is like that.

No other sound is like that.
Grieving Tree – Harp music played by Catharine DeLong