Still Learning To Grieve

 

 

 

Sign said:

“If you could give your 30-year-old self advice, what would that be?”

And I went and found Richard earlier in life.

 

 

Midnight’s Menagerie

there is a certain loneliness

lingering beneath my eyelids

spiraling out of control

like music's great crescendo

in such intimate ecstasies

such possibilities reside

in secret spontaneous explosion

of memories, wishes and regrets

that are useless at 3 am

 

if one should change even one

this march of time

would become chaos of staccato

dominoes pounding against each other

until all fall down into ashes of reality

 

if one could just replace one

without changing all else

this would be sweet

moonlight sonata that would slip

from beneath wet eyelashes

to draw me into slumber's acceptance

 

©Carol Desjarlais 7.2020

 

I Carry Your Heart with Me

BY E. E. CUMMINGS

I carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

 

When my beloved died five years ago today, my grief was palpable.  It was unimaginable how much pain and emotional trauma keeping him at home and spending those five weeks going through the dreadful steps of his going.  That last night, Jen, I and his niece, Lisa, slept near him.  I was on the couch; the girls were sleeping on the floor but none of us really slept.  I was exhausted beyond words, in every way, having spent most of the five weeks alone with him, watching him leave a little bit more every day.  Although his family stopped in and Jen came up from Florida a coupel of times, I felt so alone.  None of my family was there.  I had no one truly close to me able to be with us.  I would never do anything like that alone without my loved ones with me again.  In fact, I see myself changed in ways that are protective, now, and I am less able to completely surrender to my new life without him.

 

I crumbled, day by day as his leaving took its way with him, with us, with me.  I was never so hurt, so angry at God, so vulnerable and it was ugly.  I ranged between anger and raw emotional grief, with a sacred sadness, with utter collapse void of any strength.  I was a raw ugly need.  Within the next 24 hours, I broke completely, crack by dark crack of helplessness.

Tonight, as I spend the night remembering, trying to figure out when the cracking began, and simply see grief in its rawness, and realize how far I have come without him.  I walk that path of death with him for those five weeks, tonight, as I do every anniversary of his leaving as if it were just happening again.  I have been fearful of going back to that raging storm that death wreaks upon any of us who lose their soulmate. 

We know grief.  I know grief.  Grief has many names for me, but this, this was beyond reckoning.  I was totally consumed by helplessness that the process takes one to.  I simply could not stay present as it consumed us.  It was like being in a horrible scene within a snowglobe and some great hand was violently shaking it and us within it were tossed into a storm that had no real ending but has become a slowing until the inner bubble stops and the world is no longer the same.  Inner life is never the same.  Body, mind, heart and soul is never the same nor can it be.  I have spent these years within a shell and my inner self is disconnected and confused most times.  My inner life and outer life are not congruent.  I am walking the walk but my inner self is sloshing around inside with no connection to present reality.  I, after all these years, these long lonely years, realize that I will never feel at home anywhere again.

Grief is different for everyone and each losing is different for a person.  The process of grief is not linear.  It isn’t a slow linear healing.  It is an adjusting to a new foreign land.  It leaves you fragmented.  I can become stricken by grief at any moment, when something triggers a memory which takes me back to that breath-taking loss of those five weeks.  It can become almost crippling.  I am a cripple.  I may always be so as I try to put one step in front of the other.  I realize I am simply putting in time.

There is an emotional revolution taking place, and evolution, but it always comes back to the stark reality of loss and never ever being able to bring back any sense of who I was before. 

I am realizing that a grieving one tends to continue processing; questions with no answers; discomfort at how broken we can be; what to do when one is overwhelmed with a wave that comes crashing in’ allowing oneself to feel the rawness no matter how painful.  I have learned how isolating grief is and should be.  No one can judge nor understand an individual’s depth of grief nor how they grieve.  I cannot apologize enough for how broken I was and how that brokenness shows through betimes.  No one can really comfort one in grief but being around one’s family during or as soon as possible is a true requirement.  I do not trust easily.  I need to be around my family as it is the only thing that comforts me.  The three weeks with them at the beginning of August and seeing and feeling the depth of pure love heals one from so many things.  It was the best thing for me, even now, all these years (eons) later, I still need the comfort of them.  I literally sapped ever ounce of love from them that I could manage. 

And so, another year (eternity) without him and his loss in my life is felt every day.  But, there is a sense of calmness in awaiting my turn to be with him and that is a good thing.  I am definitely not suicidal, but I do long for the next.  In the meantime, I do those things that comfort me, that help me feel closer to him, that succors me.  I do feel I have distanced from so many and it is my problem not theirs.  I am protective of Self.  I am still fragile in so many ways, but I also honor the strength that got me through those weeks, and now years.  I honor my daughter that gives me comfort at a level she may have no idea of.  I try to stay positive and meet new challenges quickly for I know that time is short and things need to be kept dear or kept away.  This goes for people too.  It is not that I cannot love.  I do.  But, I am also insuring that those who I love deeply, know it, feel it, see it.  I am not distant.  I am merely working on being Present and am tending to fragment things that are not as serious as they might have been.

 

I love.  I have been greatly loved in return.  I honor those who allow me to love them and forgive me my frailties.  I had no idea how wonderful allowing myself to be still, to move apart, to spend time feeling every feeling and making sure every moment is worth being here however whole I might, or might not, be.

©Carol Desjarlais 8.27.20