Last year in April, I posted a jotting on Face Book that had been living and growing in my mind the entire year since my husband, best friend, and my muse passed away. It was titled Grief is Layered. Some asked for a copy it, and I shared it. One friend and reader told me it made her smile. I will post it here (below), and then the thoughts mulling in my mind these last few weeks.
Those who know grief intimately will tell you that the stages, they speak of in articles and books, don’t go to the soul of it. Those writings speak of psychology and describe grief’s surface. But when you know it bone deep, it is something complex in its design, a silken tissue thin, and heavy drape of pain, both at once. The gauze, you see through each day, as you are trying to catch up with life moving in all its myriad directions. Glad for it because it takes you where you might not have been and wouldn’t have thought to go. Rediscovering the sound of a baby’s laugh, a door held open, a welcomed smile from a stranger, the voice of a friend. The weighted drape separates you from the world, shielding you from those who cannot and should not know. That weighted curtain can cloak you from their eyes, muffle your cries, and sop your tears, permitting a growing peace to soothe your soul.
So here is Grief is Layered and then the aftermath, Love’s Tears, the thoughts I am having today. You can feel free to share. Perhaps it will speak to the heart of someone who knows this, or remind that somehow they can find the essence of the ones they loved and lost, renewed and reborn in their memories. And maybe, just maybe, allow themselves the gifts of friends who tug them along, and take them out to play some days when their souls can, and who leave them to grieve when they must.
Grief is Layered
Poesy
by
Delores Lowe Friedman
Grief is layered.
It is cluttered with memories that transport you places, years away.
Feeling the flush of new love, a renaissance of warm wonder,
Followed by the first fear, the raw chill of loss.
Fall has always felt full of endings, pregnant with golden teardrops of falling leaves, dying and collecting at our feet.
So, it is the passing of time, we accept because we must,
But passing love, we press on our breasts, holding fast to pieces that ease the pain, bits so bittersweet, linger like languid licks or lashes lining our backs, reminding us of what, at once, was and is no more. Can you imagine a joy so intense that its blade sears as it is pulled from your soul?
Like handfuls of seawater, escaping our fingers, flowing away from us through our clenched fists, holding fast to the ways love felt.
Full as a pounding wave breaking into bits, and gentle as a pulse of your love’s sleeping heartbeat.
Profound paradoxes crashing about in my mind, trying to piece together the sad happiness of loving you a half a century.
My lonely tears collect themselves in my chest until they break free and squirt from my eyes leaving behind the salty symbol that sadness etches my soul.
Now they secrete themselves again, as I stumble along with the rest of the world, trying to keep up as they merrily roll along.
Until it comes again, that pathetic spark which reminds us of a better time.
Buried there in my mind, a playful time presents. A touch, a taste, an instant revisits, and you are there again.
Grief is layered with these full, rich times of joyous love, that picks you up and spins you about and dizzies you, till like the golden leaf dancing in in the wind, l am lost in you.
Here is the Aftermath, Love’s Tears. A peek into the lives of two writers.
Hi Dee! Happy New Year! Thank you for sharing your beautiful and very moving thoughts with me. I truly can identify with both. I still feel the immense loss of my parents and Warren. No matter how much I laugh and share good times with friends, there is that lingering sense of loss that is deep inside and never goes away. As you so beautifully wrote “Our treasures live in my memory’s, watered with my tears.” The memories of my loved ones are held tightly and sustain me every day!
You are truly gifted and blessed with the written word!
I hope all is well and we will talk very soon!❤️
Thanks Keith. Our memories reappear, and like gifts that sustain us and give us focus and reason to continue.
Beautifully written Dee!! I too loved the same sentiment, “our treasures live in my memories, watered by tears”. That truly speaks volumes!! After losing my son, friends tried to comfort me, by saying he still lived on in my heart, and memories. What they didn’t know, was those memories were watered down by tears. Only very recently have the tears stopped, and my memories are very clear now.
Beautifully written Dee!! I too loved the same sentiment, “our treasures live in my memories, watered by tears”. That truly speaks volumes!! After losing my son, friends tried to comfort me, by saying he still lived on in my heart, and memories. What they didn’t know, was those memories were watered down by tears. Only very recently have the tears stopped, and my memories are very clear now.
Thank you Debra. I can’t imagine that pain, but I am glad that the memories are becoming clearer–hold them close.
Dee,
So tender and beautiful.
Thank you, Walter. I appreciate your sentiments.
Hi Dee,
These were so richly written, and your love for Karl comes through so deep. What a lucky man to have your love!
I especially like the line “ Can you imagine a joy so intense that its blade sears as it is pulled from your soul?” That image I can feel!! And I understand it, and can visualize the very separation in my mind.
Your writing is intense and purposeful, every word placed where it must go, like grief. As someone who works in Hospice I know that feelings must be felt, and over and over again, with despair and anguish but with hope and again love.
Love and Hugs,
Donna
Hi Donna,
Thank you so much for your comments. I can feel that you understand and can connect to these words on so many levels, and in so many ways. I am grateful for my writing, because it allows me to express the thoughts that hang out here in my mind. And it also gives me a catharsis and renewal that allows me to go on. Whether it is through jottings that are poetic prose, poetry, or through dialogue or descriptive prose in my novels, writing feeds my soul and allows me my path through this life. So I am happy my words speak to the hearts, minds and souls of others.
Hi, Delores:
What truly beautiful poems these are. An extraordinary tribute to the love that you and Karl shared, and I believe still do.
Thank you so very much for sharing these with us.
Much love to you,
Lisette
Thank you so much Lisette. Your words mean a great deal, coming from a fellow writer. These words burst from me. You know what I mean about words that will not be walled up. Thanks again. I appreciate hearing from you.