How to Cure Grief: A Death Doula’s Instructions
First, you must slowly walk the Appalachian Trail. Start at the summit of Mount Katahdin, collecting all the bloodroot along the way to the Chattahoochee for protection, renewal, and deep healing. You must arrive exactly three years later. No more, no less. If you arrive even a day early, you must turn back and begin again. If you arrive even a minute late, the remedy is lost to you forever.
Next, you must track Jupiter’s revolution. This will take twelve years, but patience is necessary — grief does not loosen for those in a hurry. Watch as the planet drags itself across the sky, slow and deliberate, returning to the place it was when you first learned what loss tasted like. Stand beneath it when it completes its cycle, and whisper anything you want to the great storm that rages in its belly. If the storm calms, even for a moment, grief will grant you a brief reprieve. But if it rages on, as it always has, you must accept that some storms never still.
Then, you must gather the last breath of a dying deer. Not one hit in the middle of a New Jersey highway, but one who’s made it to 20 and whose body is doing what bodies do when it’s time to go. Hold it in your cupped hands, careful not to spill it, and carry it to the nearest sycamore tree. Whisper everything you lost into its hollow trunk, and if it answers, listen carefully — grief will only dissolve if the tree deems you worthy. Trees always sounds like the wisest women we knew. If it does not answer, you must try again with another tree, and another, until the woods themselves take pity on you.
After that, you must find the river that has never been mapped. It is somewhere between the life you thought you had and the one you never planned for. You will know it when you see it because it runs both forward and backward at the same time. Wade in until the water reaches your throat and recite the names of everyone who ever loved you, in order, without forgetting a single one. If you forget even one name, the river will not let you pass, and you will have to return to the beginning, to Mouth Katahdin, and start the journey again.
If by a miracle you pass the river, you must cross into the Andes and walk the Greater Patagonia Trail until you find the young shaman waiting at the mountaintop. They will be no older than twelve but will speak with the voice of someone who has seen the end of the world and chosen to stay anyway. They will ask you one question. The question will be different for everyone, and you must answer honestly. If you lie, even a little, even to protect yourself, the shaman will turn away, and you will have to descend the mountain knowing you will never be free.
But you are honest and you will pass. I believe in you. After the shaman, go to the ocean at low tide and find the moon’s reflection in the shallow pools. It will not be in the same place twice, and you will have only one chance to catch it with your bare hands and your eyes closed. If you can hold the moon for the length of one deep breath, grief will loosen its grip, just slightly. But if it slips through your fingers, if the tide swallows it whole before you can grasp it, then you must wait another seven years before trying again.
With the moon in your palms, you must find the place where your grief began. It might be a house. A hospital room. A stretch of highway in front of a mall. A sidewalk you ran to only to see a bloody sheet covering a body you knew was once part of you. It might not even be a place but a scent, a song, the way someone once spoke your name. When you find it, sit down and stay there until the earth shifts beneath you, until time itself rearranges to make room for your sorrow. Only then will you understand this:
Grief cannot be cured.
It cannot be outrun or outwitted. It cannot be bargained with or buried beneath miles of bloodroot and moon rocks. You can only carry it, like a weathered pack slung over your shoulders, and decide each day how much of its weight you are willing to bear. Some days, it will be light as the leg that once wrapped around you in the bed. Some days, it will buckle your knees. And yet, you will keep walking.
Because that is what the grieving do.
And that is the only cure there ever was.
