Grief is Love
A Memoir of Surviving Bereavement
Genre: Nonfiction
Universal Link: https://books2read.com/u/4Nyqr8
A friend changed my mind about something I mulled over in the past. I never like to stay caught in sadness, negativity, not even in any limbo. My dear friend, who lost her husband last year, telephoned to tell me that the poetry in my memoir about loss and grief helped her more than any advice she had received. After having published that book, I rarely opened it again. Now I took another look, purposely at the poetry I had written pouring our my emotions because I didn’t know what else to do with them. It’s been over five years and I feel strong enough to revisit these emotional pieces. Now I’m publishing three poems here with a little explanation for each.
When the Time Came was written after I had seen my partner through four months of fighting cancer. The doctors and I knew we had to let him go. It was the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my life. Then this is the poem I wrote afterward, memorializing that heartache.
When the Time Came
You nor I wanted to be kept alive on life support
I didn’t know if I had the courage to end your life
When the time came
I watched you weaken, no longer functioning
quietly slipping into a coma
When the time came
The doctor said your condition was irreversible
gave you two days at most to live
When the time came
It was now my decision to stop monitoring you
let you go peacefully since you weren’t in pain
When the time came
I summoned my strength to follow your wishes
told the doctor to end all treatments
When the time came
I carried out my promise because I love you
But found no satisfaction in pseudo-courage
When the time came
Fire Without Flame represented how I felt when my partner was gone. It’s common for the survivor to sink into depression. It can happen fast after being a caregiver for months. After their last breath is drawn, everything changes in an instant. Numbness sets in. Like so many others experience, it was a place I thought I’d never get out of, but for the caring attention of friends, and a counselor.
Fire Without Flame
Stars fall like ashes
Sunlight stiff and cold
The universe howls
but there is no wind
Only descent
into an abyss
with no escape
into a fire without flame
in the prison of my mind.
It was a strange feeling of writing Moving On. I was still experiencing my own grief but also dealing with friends and their losses. The more we shared together, helped me “see the light.” I was still deep in grief when I wrote this but knew I would someday be okay because I felt it.
Moving On
Written into perpetuity
The errors, the failings
insecurities
right judgements
life sustaining heartfelt love
Nothing can be changed
Lamenting the past shared
with a departed loved one
keeps us stuck in grief
delays future happiness
blocking
a new reality that seeps in
pushing heartache aside
never forgotten but to become
a minute portion
of the larger scheme of life
and death
With past goodnesses
remembered brighter than all the rest
Moving on because we still live
in the memory of all things that were
of all things yet to be
taking their places in our lives
till our cycle like that of our beloved
completes
It’s my wish that readers feel my poetry as deeply as those going through grief. It’s my wish that this book helps others, especially those who don’t know where to begin to understand feelings associated with loss. This little book, Grief is Love, contains about 50% poetry, 50% essays. Some of the essays instruct and give encouragement. Not only is this a memoir of my own bereavement process, I have included several testimonials from friends about how they managed their grief process. Everyone experiences grief differently, but learning how others handle it, helps greatly. I have never heard anything negative about this book though I even hesitated to publish it. It is so personal. Now I find it has helped many, for which I am greatful. It should no lonoger remain hidden.
Universal Link: https://books2read.com/u/4Nyqr8