Every one of us living on this Earth will eventually pay the price for loving someone, though many of us don’t realize this until it happens to us. The price is a steep one, higher if the relationship was a close and loving one, though it’s impossible to put a number on the pain of one’s grief. Loving someone means someday you will intimately know grief. Despite the unbearable pain, I suspect all who have loved and lost will say it was worth it. For even though we would never have to go through the pain of grief if we never loved, who would want to do that? Love as I’m sure all of you know, may, as someone famous once said, “Not make the world go round, but it does make the ride worthwhile.”
I lost my best friend and husband, Joe, in November. In losing him, I have also lost myself, our future dreams, and many, many other unnamable and unspeakable things. Until each of us have traveled this road through our own wilderness of grief, it’s impossible to imagine how painful it will be, how disorientating, exhausting, and debilitating. No words can ever convey the depth of the suffering and what’s especially hard is how quickly society expects us to “move on” and or “get over it.” As anyone who has ever lost a loved one knows, there is no timeline for grief. And there is no such thing as “getting over it–” instead, we learn to live with the loss, learning how to carry it AND at the same time existing in this world.
I’ve found comfort through these months in being outside in nature where I go daily for renewal and peace, often sitting quietly and doing nothing other than BEing. I also find comfort in poetry, especially from a book my friend, Robin gave me, called All the Honey, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. I leisurely enjoy two or three of her poems every morning at breakfast as I watch the birds and listen to the music of spring echoing through our Enchanted Forest… and imagine Joe sitting beside me at the table.
Here is a poem I read recently that I love so much I printed it out and keep it in my purse to read whenever I need a reminder of something good.
For the Living by Roesmerry Wahtola Trommer
–with a line paraphrased from Wendy Videlock
It is the work of the living
to grieve the dead.
It is our work to wake each day,
to live into the world that is.
It is our work to weep,
and it our work to be healed.
Some part of us knows
not only the absence of our beloveds,
but also their presence,
how they continue to teach us,
how they invite us to grow.
It is our work to be softened by loss,
to be undone, destroyed, remade.
Wounded, we recoil,
and it is our work to notice how,
like crushed and trampled grass,
we spring back.
It is our work to meet death again
and again and again,
and though it aches to be open,
it is our work to be opened,
to live into the opening
until we know ourselves
as blossoms nourished from within
by the radiance of the ones
who are no longer physically here.
They have given us their love light to carry.
It is our work to be in service that light.
And one more, this one by Donna Ashworth:
You don’t move on after loss, but you must move with.
You must shake hands with grief,
welcome her in, for she lives with you now.
Pull her a chair at the table and offer her comfort.
She is not the monster you first thought her to be.
She is love.
And she will walk with you now, stay with you now,
peacefully,
If you let her.
And on the days when your anger is high,
remember why she came,
remember who she represents.
Remember.
Grief came to you my friend because love
came first.
Love came first.
If you’ve ever had to grieve a loved one, I hope you find comfort in these poems too. Wishing you a peaceful day.