“There’s a grief that can’t be spoken…..”

First of all, if you are tenderhearted because of a recent loss, you might want to proceed with caution because I will be talking about grief and loss. The words in the title are from “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” from the musical play “Les Miserables”. as Marius mourns his comrades in arms. What has inspired this blog about grief and remembrance, well, several things: It is the season where there are reminders of the coming Mother’s Day everywhere and even after fifteen years this still reminds me of my loss, and I have a dear friend who recently lost her mother and I was thinking how this must resonant with her. We just lost Dick Clark, who was so much a part of my formative years. I have been listening to Miranda Lambert’s “Over You”, which so succinctly sums up the feelings of grief over a beloved so in just nine word of the chorus. “You went away, how dare you, I miss you.”

I come from a background that basically taught you to suck it up. Grief was a very private thing, you didn’t really talk about it once the funeral rites were over except to remember and share stories. You didn’t really share pain you still felt When I have lost people I have channeled a lot of it into my poetry. Lamentation is a staple of many poets..

The past couple of decades I have seen that the ready access to media has made mourning a very public and communal even for people we don’t really know. Princess Diana’s death I think was the apex of this, but it continues and is magnified with Facebook, Twitter, and so much non-scripted television. It sometimes seems over the top that people are so distraught when a famous person dies and how much media has made people feel that they “know” celebrities. But I think it also maybe reflective of the need to feel connected, to share with others. I remember vividly when Kennedy was assassinated, people came together in their mutual grief and shock and were riveted to the black and white images flashing on the TV screens. It ever so briefly united a nation that was facing a lot of change and dissention.

Grief isn’t really something that can be measured or easily defined, it is individual and although everyone experiences it, each person experiences it in his or her own way. And it doesn’t seem that we grieve the same for everyone we lose in our lives because each loss affects us in different ways. Sometimes it can be mixed with other emotions; relief if a loved one has been suffering acutely, guilt if there were unresolved issues, helplessness or a feeling that you could have somehow prevented the death, abandonment, anger, denial, fear, or a mixture of many emotions.

Our thoughts and feelings about our own mortality and spirituality or religiousness can be thrown into confusion. Memories become precious commodities, clung to, shared and sometimes fragile. Birthdays, holidays, certain place, meals, objects can stir the memories and the feelings of grief but also help us cope and eventually hopefully dull the pain and reinforce the happiness our loved ones gave us.

Innocence Lost

The assassin’s gun ended a dream
So we clung to one another
For comfort and tried to make sense
Of the unimaginable, the unknown
And my mind reached out
But couldn’t find you
So in his arms my fears were calmed
He was gentle and sweet
And couldn’t have known
That it should have been you
That it was doomed before it began
The memory of that night would
Ever be linked to loss
Of innocence
Of hope
Of the dream
That was you.

SPRING

When I was small one of my grandfather’s friends used to regale us with an anonymous poem:

Spring has sprung
The grass has ris’
I wonder where the birdie is
There he is up in the sky
He dropped some whitewash in my eye
I’m alright, I won’t cry
I’m just glad that cows can’t fly

I think I remember it most because as a child who became rather obsessed with words at a fairly early age and being very proud of my grammar prowess, I was somewhat put off by the use of the word “ris”. But it did lead me to other poems about spring later on.

Spring is that season that holds so much promise. The long doldrums of winter are coming to an end. It is a time for renewal – plant life begins to bloom, the brown carpet on the ground starts to turn green and flowers show their colors. The animals begin to become more active, food is more abundant for them; they start migrations and breeding cycles. Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall” reminds us that the human species also reacts romantically to spring… “In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love…”

The vernal equinox as determined by the earth’s axis making the center of the sun and the earth’s equator align has throughout the ages and in both pagan and religious communities been a reason for celebrations. And despite what the various practitioners might want to believe, all the traditions have commonalities, leading back to the physical manifestations that occur during this time. The changes in weather, the behavior of flora and fauna, and biological imperatives all became part of the rituals. May Day, Passover, Easter, Now Ruz, Mardi Gras, Chinese New Year even Groundhog Day, are just some of the many rituals that have grown from the merging of culture and nature.

While spring is prosaically thought of as bright and gentle and linked to creation, weather patterns are often mercurial and destructive. April showers can be quickly replaced by tornadoes, blue skies replaced by grey. Those rains that provide irrigation for growing food for man and beast and clean water for marine life can cause destructive floods for months to come. There is growing awareness of “seasonal creep” that the phenological signs of spring are occurring earlier by a couple of days per decade.

Spring is a time of renewal for many. Heavy winter clothing can be put away; we shed it as the animals shed their excess coats. Spring-cleaning ritualistically renews our “nests”. Spring breaks give students a chance to take time before the final push toward the end of the school year. The end of spring brings proms, graduations and weddings. Endings and beginnings tied together seasonally. Those graduations mean life changes for students, either going off to college or out into the adult world. The weddings celebrate love and new beginnings. And as baseball teams go into spring training, some of us start looking at ways to get ready for summer, planning vacations, getting our bodies “swimsuit” ready, maybe even a little shopping to help us blossom.

Despite the unstable nature of the weather, spring is a wonderful time of year; a time to celebrate and renew, to shed whatever is weighing us down and look or “spring” forward.

“Spring”

There are buds on the rose bush
Outside my window
Reminding me of the long ago days
At my grandmother’s house
Playing in the sun porch
As the roses climbed the trellis outside
And a robin built a nest among the branches.
The budding roses are yellow
The color of the roses on my prom bouquet
The last dance before the longer dance
That would become my life
Full of changing music and changing partners
And other roses in other windows
Always announcing another spring
Another chance to begin again