Posted by MERM on 1/11/2009, 9:02 am
156.34.246.79
Dearest Donna, I was saddened to hear about our loss. May these words comfort you all in your deep grief MERMIE
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
*******
IN MEMORY OF SANDRA
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
REMEMBER!
Grief remains one of the few things that has the power to silence us.
It is a whisper in the world and a clamor within.
More than sex, more than faith, even more than its usher death,
grief is unspoken, publicly ignored
except for those few moments at the funeral that are over too quickly,
or the conversations among the cognoscenti,
those of us who recognize in one another a kindred chasm deep in the center of who we are
Maybe we do not speak of it because death will mark all of us, sooner or later.
Or maybe it is unspoken because grief is only the first part of it.
After a time it becomes something less sharp but larger, too,a more enduring thing called loss.
Perhaps that is why this is the least explored passage:because it has no end.
The world loves closure, loves a thing that can, as they say, be gotten through.
This is why it comes as a great surprise to find that loss is forever,
that two decades after the event there are those occasions
when something in you cries out at the continual presence of an absence.
WITH HEARTFELT SYMPATHY MERMIE FOUNDER WELLNESSTRAIN GROUP ~M~
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