THE loud PAUSE

“The death of a beloved is an amputation.”

— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

I wrote this ten months into my grief, June 2021:

There are spaces in the mind, in the days and, even, the nights

What will fill these cracks?

Is it Pain or is it Light?

Some losses are not got over

Some losses take you deep,

into the valley of the shadow.

There is no getting done with it

You are compelled to submit

To pain, and profound sorrow

And hope, with grit, for a better tomorrow

. . .

Hope is the thing that resides in our soul

Yet we feel helpless and out of control

We resist and refuse to consent

And honor we have changed from this tragic event

There is no getting done with it

Just like there ain’t no quit

Days turn to night, today into tomorrow

Again, and again, you awake to climb the mythical Mt. Kilimanjaro

. . .

Though he has died, the memory has not

The curls, the smiles, the joy and the light

Are all part of this mysterious plot

Why oh why

Did he have to die?

So young, so tender

How am I supposed to surrender?

. . .

Let your mind wander

Listen to your thoughts

Through pain and ponder

and a stomach tied in knots

You soon discover

Love and grief are the most individualized things on planet earth

You harken back to the day of his birth

Mourning is anything but comfortable

Its outcome is uncertain

The road ahead insufferable

. . .

We live our life in chapters

But are we reactors or adapters?

I wake up every day carrying a name and a face

memories of a life that was cut short far too early.

And though time keeps moving, it cannot erase

the love that still lives in every sacred place.

The earth has broke open beneath my feet

yet no-one else seems to see the destruction

or understand,

how this may feel like an alien abduction.

If someone could just explain

What from this experience shall I gain?

. . . .

Grief indeed pushes you to the edge of your brain

Your feet dangle, your heart is broken

With or without you, God has spoken

The stars remain, unable to explain

Why oh why did this have to happen?

I would give anything to have him back

He left without warning

Leaving us in deep mourning

. . .

Grief fractures the architecture of our souls,

yet somehow dares us to love once more.

It is not one feeling.

It is many - colliding, contradicting,

knocking me to the floor.

Shock that doesn't wear off.

Pain that doesn't move in a straight line.

A silence so loud it becomes physical,

settling somewhere deep inside.

Things will never be as they were before.

There is no getting done with it.

No moving on.

I must learn to sit inside the grit -

to breathe alongside the ache,

to carry what cannot be changed,

and somehow, impossibly,

to love with a heart that has been broken wide open.

. . .

Grief rises and falls with unexpected surges

Carrying us forward like a tide moving shoreward

We are spiritual beings on a human journey

Aware now, more than ever, that our life is tortured

there is no doubt, this is a life sentence.

Our hearts are empty, shattered, and split.

Dreams and plans no longer fit,

our world has been divided into before and after.

We don’t just grieve who they were;

we grieve who they would have been.

And that grief renews itself, again and again

Days turn to night, today into tomorrow

leaving us to wonder,

Is there life beyond this sorrow?

. . .

The terms are different now

There is strength in the trees, the ground and the water

The sun still rises and sets somehow

We weep, we wail

We are told we will prevail

The person we were also departed

There is mourning inside mourning

Where in the hell was the warning?

There is no getting done with it,

no moving on nor a timeline toward healing,

you are simply left reeling,

learning, slowly and unevenly, how to

carry love and grief together.

So you walk on because surrendering and giving up,

costs more than continuing forward.