Cricket Gifts

Do I post? Do I not post?

Why would I post? 

To give voice. To release it into 'the field.' Because I know others experience deep grief and isolation; though we feel alone, we are not alone. (I'm thinking mainly of folks who live with a long-term illness or disability.)

Why would I not? 

How will others categorize me, under which denigrating labels, reducing my humanity to a simplistic judgment?  A grief-ridden, needy, attention-seeking, disabled, hopeless, old woman who must be stupid because she keeps going through this grieving process. 

If she'd just turn back to God and the Bible or get out more or think positive or (fill-in-the-blank-with-your-favorite-panacea) she could get well...

 

~*~*~*~*

August 19, 2025

That kind of grief where, after the weeping, one finds herself sitting in physical darkness, eyes downcast blankly staring at the floor, dumbed with silence, feeling nothing, no thoughts, no words...

Until at some point, an intervention of sorts, gently taps the soul...

Not to stop the process, but to acknowledge it, allow it, give it space and openness for what it needs...

*~*

Last week, I pushed to get out of the house for appointments on Monday, Thursday, and Friday.

Tuesday the house cleaners were here. I'm thankful for them, but it's another day when my fatigued brain-and-body must accommodate other humans in my energy space.

I totally get why children cry when they're tired.

With the exhaustion of fatigue, sometimes all one can do is cry.

Saturday, I wept and wept and wept...

Holding on through the fatigue-grief deluge...

Why am I still alive? 

What is the point?

No one needs me for anything anymore.

I'm too broken.

That night, I sit alone in the living room, in the wingback armchair inherited from Mom.

The armchair where our dog companions once sat so they could look out the bay window.

I sit in the physical darkness, withdrawn, blankly staring at the floor.

The tears have stopped.

Now the nothingness.

And then I hear a lone cricket who is somewhere in an adjoining room.

I wonder how long he's been singing without me noticing.

I listen.

I listen.

To this indoor melody as Cricket makes himself known.

I whisper in my heart, "I hear you. You are seen. Yes Carol, the crickets still sing."

I feel comfort from Cricket's company.

The grief has settled for the time being.

My downcast face lifts a bit.

With eyes closed, I bow my head in gratitude.

I am not alone.

~*~

As life-spontaneities would have it, crickets had recently been on my mind...

Just a few days before this nighttime soloist serenade, I called 3 Crickateers and spoke with Chad, one of the owners.

Chad and his wife Claire founded the Minnesota company in 2017. They sustainably raise crickets and include the crickets in their food products and snacks. They offer cricket powder as a nutritional food supplement; and for an organic, chemical-free fertilizer and pest deterrent, one can purchase cricket frass (that is, cricket poop) for the health of soil and plants. 

This was my first time contacting 3 Cricketeers. I'd called to offer a poem I'd written in 2007 while hiking a section of a previous route of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, not far from where I purchased my first 3 Crickateers snack in June 2025. If Chad wants to use the poem, it's free. 

(Brian, a poet friend at the time of the poem's birth, is a Celtic-knot artist. Brian and I had cowritten a few poems together. And again, Brian collaborates, but instead of the written word, he draws a beautiful Celtic-knot art piece illustrating the cricket in my poem. Brian's mother-in-law then sewed a replica of Brian's Celtic-knot cricket onto a quilt. I still feel so very humbled and honored.)

Chad and I chat for a few minutes, and he gives me an unexpected discount on my first online order. I send Chad a link that contains the poem and images of Brian's and his mother-in-law's artworks; Chad responds with gratitude.

~*~

Thank you to my inside-the-house, lone Cricket for serenading me and reminding me of his importance, and mine.

That has been the only night I've heard him inside.

Nature again heard my cries and offered Her gift...

~*~

The Cricket

 

A cricket sat upon

My golden glasses rim

He looked me in the eye

And I looked back at him

His eyes were big and round

One eyelid blinked a wink

I gazed at him and asked

"What is it that you think?"

He bobbed his head, stroked his wings

Playing a solemn tune

Then he answered wisely

Beneath the silver moon

"My life it may be short

Yet I work day and night

My melodies I play

With great purpose and delight

For those in wood and town

The two-legged creatures great

Reminding them that if I cease

They'll know it is too late."

He hopped right off my glasses

And sauntered to the trees

At night now when I hear him

I bow upon my knees

 

September 15, 2oo7 

Carol Welch 

~*~*~

An image of Brian's art piece, "The Cricket Knot," based on the poem.

Click here to view: the artful phases of The Cricket Knot. 

An image of the quilt....