My Baby is 13!

My youngest turned into a teenager today. I grieve. I grieve for the childhood moments that are mere memory. I grieve as she wishes to spend more time with friends than time with me. I grieve that her landmark birthday marks my march toward middle age.

Head and Heart

Grief is a process of the head and heart coming together. The head knows what the heart is not yet ready to believe. It is almost 5 years since my brother died and I recently felt the head and heart split once again. It was as intense as a tree being hit by lightening. It reminded me that grief is a life long process.
My brother's widow recently adopted a baby from Kazakhstan. We had the opportunity to meet the new addition to our family as they had a brief lay over at the St. Paul/ Minneapolis Airport last week. As I held this beautiful 8 month old brown eyed boy in my arms, my heart spoke these words, "He looks just like his daddy, my brother." Then my head abruptly jarred my heart back to reality-David is not fathering children, he is dead.
Comfort briefly comes when the heart looses its memory of the death. There is pain when the head calls us back to the painful reality of the death. Grief is a long, long process of the head and the heart coming together.

Twelve Songs -IX

The death of a loved one makes life come to a screeching halt. I found the rat race of life offensive after my brother died. I wanted to yell, "Stop. Stop. Be still with me in my grief." Auden's poem, Twelve Songs - IX speaks to the screeching halt of grief.

Twelve Songs - IX

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves,

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W.H. Auden - April 1936

Giref is a life long journey

I friend recently recommended a book, Beloved on Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude.
One of the poems that spoke to me was entitled, Poem in October by Andrea Hollander Budy. It reminded me that grief is our companion for a life time.
"It was my twenty-third year and heaven
broke away from my reach as I stood
at her grave. Rain carved
the morning's stone face into the earth,
and the sky grayed and lowered
until they were one. Back by the trees
men smoked, as if they had nothing
better to do. But I knew as soon as I left
they would cover even
the roses my father, brother and I
had tossed upon her as if our wishing
could do what prayer had not.
When I finally left, I thought her
gone. I am fifty-four. I was wrong.