When a loved one dies, we need to give grief a chance, allow love a healing process of sorts so that its wounds can be tended rather than be left to congeal and possibly leave the body physically as well as emotionally damaged for the duration.
Love must be allowed to run the gamut of regret, anger, bitterness, disillusionment, even guilt so that it can emerge from the long, dark tunnel of loss refreshed and strengthened. There will be scars, of course, yet we should let grief clean them with our tears so they, too, are not left weeping, but become landmarks of love to guide us through the time we must spend without the loved one, help us see that where a door closes on our lives, a window really will open for us if we’ll only it.
I have seen people spend the rest of their lives behind that closed door, rarely letting anyone in; for those of us permitted even limited access, it is painful to witness what is essentially a process of disintegration.
We can keep faith with love, and still move on if only because our loved ones would have it no other way. Besides, love’s place is among the living; only there can it thrive and preserve its losses.
'Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.' -
Edgar Allan Poe
This poem is a kenning.
SOMETIME HEALER, ALL-TIME FRIEND
I bend
like a flower in a cruel wind,
sing sad
songs learned from the trees,
sink to
my knees among shadows
like
monks in shabby cowls kneeling
in prayer
urging me to do the same,
but I
cannot pray for the only feeling
left in
me is a pain that is all my own,
yet there
is another as much to blame
for
leaving me here alone, so alone
I
prostrate myself at the altar of Time
that sees
all, spares nothing and no one,
cold
within the folds of winter’s dark,
angry at
the cheerful song of a skylark
circling
above, predisposed to celebrate
the
natural world, precious little thought
for the
fragile nature of a human heart,
broken,
as mine, into insignificant pieces
no one
will spare a second glance
What
would you have me do, skylark,
get up
and dance? How dare you deny me
this
moment of cut-throat bliss that is
(they
say) but the other side of happiness?
Leave me!
Let your sweet song beguile
ears
anxious to hear, not mine, closed now
to cheery
sounds and smells of summer
where
autumn has shed its tears and long,
lonely
winter days sure to last for years
I am Grief, a healing (of sorts) - Guardian
of Loss to the heart left nursing its pain
Copyright
R. N. Taber 2009; 20114