PRESCRIPTION FOR GRIEF | Fiona Dunbar
Your prescription:
Pull out your keys, open the lock, put your helmet on. Wheel your bike from the hospital parking cage to the street. Feel the sun and breeze on your body. Pedal home. Nine flat miles, during which tears can fall if you let them - they will dry quickly on the hot summer pavement.
Mix yeast, sugar, warm water: let sit with a warm cloth covering. Wait a while for the yeast to come alive.
Boil the kettle, pour your tea. Hold your mug between both hands for the comforting heat and breathe in the age-old healing powers of strong black tea. Sit a while, feeling shocked and heart heavy.
Mix in the flour, the salt, using your hands for a sticky, shaggy dough that gradually turns supple and becomes one. Tip out onto a floured surface. Knead not for the 10 minutes the recipe calls for, but for however long your body requires this repetitive, deep pressure motion.
Sing a song of mourning. The words fall with the movement of your arms and trunk. Expel breath and sound with the push of the dough. Breath, sing, push, repeat; breath, sing, push, repeat, repeat, repeat.
This is the mantra, the movement, the way to hold a private funeral for a child you barely knew. Warm bread will nourish you soon, once the oven is on.
Fiona Dunbar is a pediatric Occupational Therapist at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland, where she uses play to foster recovery and rehabilitation in the acute-care setting. Before becoming an OT, she was an environmental educator, gardener and landscape designer, and is curious about the intersections between the human body and the natural world.