Friday, April 20, 2012

A Grief Observed



Twenty-five years ago tonight, I collapsed into bed, wrung out, exhausted and utterly unable to sleep. My memories of the day remain fragmentary. Standing in the back of the parish church, reaching out to help Fr. John pull the white pall over Tom's casket; standing at the ambo to read; my father holding me up as the hearse pulled away from the church. Strangely, my memories of the church are as entirely empty, no one in the pews, stark white walls, like the flashback in some B movie.

Back at the house, my former post-doctoral advisor awkwardly trying to comfort me, not knowing what to say, but willing to try nonetheless. My mother, worried about her elderly father holding up. The shattered look on my father-in-law's face, fallen in on himself. Of my finally sitting down in the living room, incapable of mustering another word to anyone, unable to stand. I had not the strength left to weep.

I've been married to Victor almost 20 years, have two incredible sons who would never have been born if Tom's heart had not held that fatal flaw. Still, the joy does not obliterate the pain, does not blunt the memories. But nor can the pain mar the joy of loves present — and past. Both mingle, like the water and the wine, one cup of grace to be drunk. With courage. For courage. In love.

Tonight I have the strength to weep. For what I have lost. For what I have been given. A full measure of grace, packed down and overflowing.


9 comments:

  1. Oh wow. So sorry for this loss. I don't understand and yet I feel like I do thanks to your writing. Peace to you.

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  2. There are no words. I wish you peace.

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  3. As Fran said, there are no words. Your words you wrote were so beautifully written, Michelle, of your grief 25 years ago. That grief will always be with you in your heart, just as the happiness that you now have.

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  4. Thank you Allison, Fran and Cathy....there is peace, there is joy. Realities that can't be separated. I told my spiritual director earlier this week that I had two melody lines (ear worms?) twining through my head since Easter night: "O vos omnes qui transitis per viam, attendite et videte: si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus" and "Christ is risen, truly rise, alleluia!" and that they seemed inseparable.

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  5. I love this photo of you and Tom, the joy of the closeness and the knowledge of each other in how you are sitting.

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  6. Your writing conveys emotion so well yet I'm sure it was more. Margaret's comments on the picture are spot on - you both look so happy and connected. The mingling is an interesting way to look at feelings - not compartmentalized but present, there, real, connected.

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  7. nod, it all builds something when put together, the messy scratchy mortar, the smooth sensible bricks.

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  8. Even after the years, it is still grief and it will still hurt. With my prayers that your heart will know peace, even amidst the grief.

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  9. Kathryn, I do prefer the metaphor of the mingling to the all or nothing, joy or sorrow. And the image of newness, taken in the autumn we moved into the house, is evocative to me. I can smell the bricks in the warm sun -- like in Pearl's image....

    Thanks, Barb! My prayers continue for your recovery!

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