The stages of grief are not linear: they are a snarly ball of yarn that is so tangled you want to hurl it into the slush outside except you’ve already started knitting your sweater and in spite of dropped stitches and a loping, loose weave, you kind of love the bruised-blue-of-sunset scarf you’ve already begun, achingly warm and scratchy with memories of the one you adore.
So you sit with that ball of wool and you hold space. Sometimes you’re furiously futzing with it, doing anything you can to smush the ball through the teeniest of loopholes; other times your gazing at it with a vengeance usually saved exclusively for leaders bent on planetary destruction; other times you’re gently picking and prodding, knowing there must be a way, and through your tears you make a little progress, a little give, and you can knit another row or three before another knot presents itself; and sometimes you’re charged with unfurling the whole damn ball, and wrapping it all up again.
Oh, and then there are the times of grace when you knit with no impediments other than your aching hands, the lamp lit above you, your family breathing beside you, the rain drizzling around you, the warmth of the furnace and your cozy socks sustaining you.
Charlotte took up knitting last year when she moved to Canada while we were still in Beijing. Her cousins taught her. It reduced her stress greatly, brought her calm. Now she has encouraged Don and me to begin our own projects so we can all knit together and meditate and laugh and cry and de-stress and watch Bob’s Burgers and help each other through our individual and collective grief.
Our new start today will be to get ourselves some wool and begin our own scarves, each stitch a meditation on our dearest of Emilies.