Diefenbaker Lake is a deep section of the Saskatchewan River that cuts a T-shape through the south-central part of our province. In the summer, we swim and boat on this water, and we spend hours driving around it or waiting to be ferried across. In the winter, it collects snow drifts between the coolies on the shores, and pickup trucks and ice fishing shacks spring up to catch fish, and the spectacular winter light. The lake is part of the landscape and the story of our lives, and today the lake is a metaphor for my grief.

I studied geography in university and I loved learning about the lifecycles of rivers and lakes on landscapes. Saskatchewan’s prairies were once a glacial lake; the receding glaciers carved the land with a river over hundreds and thousands of years. When we walk the earth for such a short time, it is easy to assume the land has always looked this way. But it hasn’t. It’s been marked by the events of created history and it moves and is changed ever so slowly by the elements.So it is with us too. In 2017, a glacier of losses cut through landscape of my life. Miscarriage, family job loss, and murder dragged three deep and jagged tears through our previously prairie terrain. Over the years, I have walked through the cracks, tracing my fingers over the wounds and the scars, become familiar with the pools of tears, the unsteady places, the caves and the crevices. 

Eight years have made for more steady footing. The water flows more predictably now, having carved out the paths through to the bottom, softening the edges, pooling around sandy beaches. Grass and trees push up in unlikely places, establishing new life, along with shade and shelter in what was once just total devastation.

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Last week, our family was invited to a meeting with leaders doing work to address and try to respond to the epidemic of domestic violence. It was an unprecedented gift to be invited to the meeting, to gather with other families who have faced their own glaciers. The meeting cut a large and intentional hole in the ice of my grief.

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My grieving, like so many others before me, has seasons. Nature provides so many teachings for weathering the losses of living. Winter comes with frosty clarity and low-angled light, casting long shadows and stunning colour. It comes with snow drifts and heavy, protective coats of ice. We pull out layers of clothing and specialized gear to brace for and brave its dangers – as well as its glory.

It would be easier, honestly, not to go to the meeting, not to crack the ice that shelters me from the depths of the grief. And, there was a gathering there. A community of people who know this landscape like few others. We have lit fires in the bottom of these coolies and been carried into them and out of them. We have found ways to survive – and even do some healing – because we were not given another choice.

Our faces show the lines of eight years of living. We look a lot like we used to, and also a bit more weathered. If you didn’t know about the glacier, you might think we always looked this way. But we didn’t. We see differently from here. How could it be any other way?

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There was so much beautiful life in the land before loss. The beautiful life is still here, beneath, around, and inside what life is now. When I walk into the crevices, sit quietly along the cracks, I build bridges between heaven and earth. I set out a shack in the cold and break the ice to see the water still flowing beneath it. To let some tears fall and memories rise. There is space for sorrow and joy. The ice and the ridges are strong enough to hold it all.

There is a Landing place in the depths of grief that has become a part of the landscape of my life. It’s still shifting, and I change in and around it, ever so slowly as the elements blow through. The winter sun rises and sets, and I am bathed – again – in purple light.