Alex Staniforth is an executive coach, leadership coach and team coach.
​
July 2021
Grief in Chicago
I awoke this morning and lay in bed irritable. My back and neck hurt and I couldn’t get comfortable. I’ve felt like this for several weeks, maybe even months now. Bad sleep and painful back/neck. I check my phone and scroll mindlessly.
A post pops up on lament.
I click and am taken to a video on loss of lament - how, in our modern dystopia, we are becoming ever disconnected from ability to connect with loss - increasingly feeding from a mirror image through virtual platforms and social media - enforcing a brittle ego-ideal in each interaction. I recognise this in my own experience - pausing. Allowing myself to feel, exposed to joy and suffering - closing off to numb myself from overstimulation.
Typing in ‘lament’ on YouTube I find a video on Gaelic lament. griogal cridhe c.1757, fhir a chinn duibh c.1650, cummha mhic criomain c.1746. A final song ‘tha mi sgith’ - tha mi sgith ’s mi leam fhim - I’m tired and I’m on my own.
Warm tears roll down my cheek and I’m reminded though I may be tired I am not alone. A memory of grief stirs and I'm transported back to Chicago on the afternoon of 12th September 2016.
My heart is broken and I am in a place I do not know awaiting return to London. Walking down a road coming to what I later learn is the 4th presbyterian church, I walk inside and, up these empty expansive stairs, I open a door and find this room - beautifully spacious - a Celtic pattern on the floor, glass chandelier in one corner overlooking the city - a piano just beneath. stepping through the maze on the floor, I make my way over to the piano. I open the case and place my fingers on the keys. Fingers exploring each key - a conversation of what I am allowed to be, to feel in this moment - I am no pianist and I am in someone else’s space.
Finding a combination that make sense - these are notes of my lament. I play with the pedal - touching the keys softly, firmly - expressing where I am in a language I can't speak. Vibrations of these notes fills and empties the room for the next 40mins. A guard walks in and asks what I'm doing. I do not know - ‘I love this room’ I reply and continue - suspended in the play between the vibrations of each note and the resonance of those before it - a rich blend in which I feel a deep belonging. He keeps at the door for longer than a few moments then leaves.
I remember this time fondly.
A desire to reconnect with these notes fills my body as I lie here.
I get up and I go over to the piano - searching for the notes. I thought I'd written them down on a piece of paper back in Chicago and I wanted to find it.
To my glad surprise, I find the folded piece under the books by the piano - amused by the carelessness I'd treated this now significant artefact to a meaningful part of my life - grateful I'd kept it.
b,c#,e,b - the notes sound uplifting and I am surprised.
I play them some more, moving up and down the keys.
There - in the space between the keys I find that sensation.
My body relaxes and I allow myself to be touched.