Do you remember your first experience of saying goodbye — to a pet, a summer, a friend?
How did you make sense of it then?
Do you notice any difference in the way you now approach goodbyes?
I do remember my first experience of saying goodbye--to our first dog who was hit by a car in front of our home. I was young, and I can still remember screaming so much that our neighbors came running over, wondering what had happened. I remember feeling angry with my father, who was outside and should've been watching over our dog. It was hard to make sense of it then--I had someone to blame, but I couldn't understand how he cared so little about keeping our sweet girl safe, that it could've been prevented.
Losing my first baby was probably the one time that the loss made absolutely no sense to me, and I had a lot of trouble coming to terms with it. It was the longest stretch of grief and pain I ever experienced, and it took me years to be at peace with it. When one day, it hit me--would I have the three beautiful children I have now, had Kali survived? Most likely not. And it was in that moment that I felt I could make some sense of that horrendous goodbye.
I've lived through many goodbyes--the loss of my mother, father, first baby, grandparents, aunts and uncles, the loss of friendships, the loss of other pets. I don't know that any goodbye has gotten easier for me, though I have realized that my best approach is to allow the grief I'm experiencing and let it linger for as long as I need it to, and also that it's ok to keep moving forward, to keep embracing what life has to offer and make the best of what time I have with those I love.
Thank you so much for these reflections, Nancy. I've had the reverse image wonderings that you had - my mother told me, when I was a teenager, that years before I was born, she and my father lost two babies - one a miscarriage, and another who lived a day or two and then died. Of course this felt so sad to me, and I always wondered what those siblings would have been like. But I also realized that I'd likely not have been born, had they lived.
Susan, it is like a little tug-of-war with the feelings. To think about losing one child brought three others into the world, that I might never have had, but then to wish that baby had lived so I could've raised her and loved her.
My daughter, in her youth struggled with grief over never knowing her big sister. I had pictures of Kali outside her bedroom, in the hallway. I ended up moving the picture frame to another location, because she would cry every time she saw it. Broke my heart.
My oldest, every time we visited the cemetery when he was a toddler, would say as we drove through the cemetery gates, "Kali's house." He would crouch down and kiss the angel statue we had placed there. That was his way of connecting to her.
Susan, in your writings and in your communications with your Quiet Life Community, you never shy away from examining life in all its fullness. You challenge your readers and followers to embrace every aspect of our human existence, including its often messy, often painful, but also many beautiful moments. Your new book is such gift for families as it explores love and loss. A few days after Easter and about a week before my husband passed in 2021, it was apparent that he would soon need Hospice care. Thankfully, he was at home, and while in a weakened state, he was fully alert and delighted as the family gathered around for what I now regard as an almost sacred day. He delighted as our four grandchildren, who at the time ranged in age from six to 15, came in and out of our bedroom to chat with him. Two of our granddaughters shared moves from dances that they would be taking into their competition season, another granddaughter shared her latest art work, and our grandson regaled Poppy with play-by-plays of his recent lacrosse games. While, like any of us, our grandchildren will never welcome loss and heartbreak, I believe they will be less fearful. Their grandfather's spirit remains strong and is present in all of our gatherings.
I have found the book The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief by Jan Richardson incredibly helpful. I am a clergy person and I use her blessings in all sorts of ways.
May peace and love comfort your soul and the soul of your departed loved one. Three sharing: A quote, a resource and a series of paintings by Louis Janmot.
The Poem of the Soul is a series of oil on canvas paintings by Louis Janmot, produced between 1835 and 1881, totaling eighteen paintings and sixteen charcoal drawings. Blessings
Well, I'm still editing, and then editing again my memoir. Here is part of the epilogue. It feels odd sharing the ending of my book, but here it is. Maybe it will touch someone here. This is not my first goodbye, but certinly the most painful one.
During one of the last conversations we had, mom told me that she read that soon after the body dies, it is a few ounces lighter and she wondered if it was the soul leaving the body. Her religious faith evaporated over the years, but she held on to the hope that all of the stuff of life had to be for some reason. I had no answer and felt so sorry for not being able to produce anything close to wisdom on the subject of death.
On her final day, at four in the morning, I woke up in the chair that served as a bed for visitors in her hospice room. I heard her talking to someone near the window. She seemed to be asking questions, though I could not make out the exact words. Her arms were up, with her hands resting underneath her head, looking like she was contemplating the stars as she listened to her visitor talk. I saw no one and sat completely still listening. When she was done, she called my name and said, “I’m not in pain anymore. It’s all over.” I didn’t ask her who she was talking to. It could have been her mother or Aunt Catherine, or my brother Mike who had passed away three years earlier from lung cancer.
Later that day, just a few hours before she died, Mom took my hands in hers and gave me my marching orders to keep the family together, a task that wasn’t always possible. She told me and my brother Kenneth “It’s been good knowing you guys,” as if she was saying her goodbyes after some extended visit that was now over and she had to go home.
My tears flowed into a pool of water in both our hands. She told me that grief is really like a heavy weight you carry for a couple of years, then slowly lightens. For two years, the weight felt unbearable at times. My knees would buckle every time I’d walk down a street alone that we had walked together years earlier, or saw green and yellow speckled pears piled high at the grocery store inviting me to take a taste.
Speaking at Mom’s funeral, I shared that I would see her again somewhere out there in the universe. That is how she talked to me about what happened after death, not heaven or hell, just somewhere else in the universe. I wanted to say that I hoped she wouldn’t have to see all those men who hurt her there, but I didn’t say that. There were relatives of a few of those men sitting in front of me and I knew she wouldn’t approve of their feelings being hurt. There were those lessons she taught me about virtues and also the lesson to look away from things you don’t want to see in that moment. I was never sure how those two things could exist together but I did my best always to live with the contradiction.
In the years that followed, I often thought about her attempt to live a virtuous life as if it could shield her in a life absent of warm embraces. So many experiences would transport me back to childhood, before the age of reason, when life felt it hadn’t touched us yet.
Lots of goodbyes, grandparents, parents, a sibling, friends, pets, divorce (the hardest).
I find it helpful to consider a life as a whole rather than focusing on beginnings or ends, which are such brief moments in the totality of a life. The film Arrival, and the short story that it was adapted from, Ted Chiang’s The Story of Your Life, were complementary in helping me understand that we need to appreciate all parts of any relationship and keep them alive in our memories and in our hearts. This is also particularly helpful when considering forgiveness. “Thank you” in many cases may then be more meaningful than “goodbye.” Lately I’ve been saying “I love you” instead of “goodbye” to many people when I don’t know when I will see them again.
When I was 5, my maternal grandfather died. We were very close. He was a truck driver. One day he pulled up in his truck in front of our house and took me for a ride. He put me on his lap so that I could see the road from his perspective. It was an astonishing experience.
There was a big discussion about whether I should be allowed to view his body in the casket. In the end, my family thought it best that I see him lying in state and be allowed to say goodbye. I'm glad they did. What I remember most is coming to an understanding of what spirit is.
I looked at him and felt all the wonderful memories of him and realized that the spark that made that happen was gone from him, but not from me. I knew that for me, through our love and our wonderful memories, he would always be alive.
I am so looking forward to having a copy of your new book. I can remember being a child and becoming fiercely attached to a young horse in a meadow, which I was sure had a special spiritual connection to me. As young people, we have an openness to us that enables us to so quickly bond with animals. It's special and deep.
Reading your email I am embarassed to say I cried with recognition and relief. My first loss I remember was our family dog Twiggy. Twiggy was my Dad's hunting companion, and our faithful and sweet black lab who endured being dressed up in many costumes. When we lost her I was busy playing, off in my childhood imaginative world, and although sad, played on.
Now as an adult, I would think that the losses and deaths would come easier. As if with age we would grow wise to these losses, and numb or habituated, but quite the opposite has happened to me. After losing my sweet and fiery dog Pepper, the tears come easily. And yes, reading your email I found myself crying about how the leaves are turning yellow and falling from our Dogwood tree, and Summer is ending. The days are still warm but the signs of another ending are here.
And my husband is quite astonished and doesn't know what to think of me crying about the leaves turning but it is just a deep recognition of the transience of things.
So thank you for writing such bittersweet emails, and for letting me know I am not alone.
I was a young child, at a friend's house and saw a dead duck in her pond. I had never seen anything dead and it was quite upsetting. I still have that image vivid in my 'little girl' memory (I am a HSP along with being a quiet deep thinker.)
To answer your question about my first goodbye, I was four years old when my father played chess with me the third time. The first time he had won, the second time we tied, and this third time, I won. My father never played with me again.
I had loved playing with him in ways that were challenging for me. Everybody else—at least it seemed to me—was stuck in childish play like peekaboo (unfair, because most had stopped doing that to me earlier) and twelve-piece puzzles.
I mourned that loss by retreating into the position of an observer of life. I never talked to my dad about it. And when my dad left us about 8 years later, he had been long gone for me. I did not grieve then, as much as I did not have a way to grieve when he stopped playing.
Knowing now that we were both on the spectrum, that story makes much more sense, and I have consciously started to allow myself to grieve in the last few years. I have not succeeded yet.
Congratulations Susan on this beautiful family legacy, and gift to children.
Like many here I’ve had many losses. As a child we left our home country, and our family dog with a friend. I was 10 and had no idea of the pain to come, and there wasn’t conversation about that.
Children generally need stories, words, expression of loss - a topic often too difficult for many of us to know how to approach it. I worked with children in my career and am so grateful to see many more resources like this. ❤️
It is such a strange thought that sorrow and grief are not a part of being whole ...
I have grief and sorrow ... I am not my grief and sorrow.
It's essential to have and live grief and sorrow, to grow in an awareness of all life encompasses.
Beautiful Susan, there can't be enough children books (for grown ups to read too :)).
Children crave to understand life so they can relate to the happenings and build a kinship with all that's living inside themselves and the living beings and books like yours can help them understand.
I love the illustration, what a love and tenderness!! Amazing.
This is a timely post as I sit beside my Dad, likely on the Eve of his death. I welcome your readers to make comments on poetry or writings that have offered them solace and captured the whole experience of walking alongside someone in his dying process. I am a Therapist and have walked many people through their grief. In fact, my next post on my Substack will likely be about how to support a partner in their grief. I'm not looking for advice so much as beautiful words. And, I'm loving this community of tender hearts and bright minds. Thank you, Susan, and others.
I shared a post I wrote about my mom after she died in July. Writing it was therapeutic, as has been responding to the comments from friends and family. Share your grief and it will come back to you as love and compassion. Loss is the great constant of our lives.
Ann, I have just read your post on your Substack. It is beautiful - full of the gentle wisdom that only comes from the space that the bereaved occupy. I am so glad that you had your huband by your side and he understood it all.
I wrote about losing my daughter shortly after she was born. It was the most significant moment of my life. My post is here:
I look forward to continuing to read about others experience with loss. I just published the following post. While the title pitches it about how to support a partner in their grief (since the focus of my Substack is Couples Therapy), it's really about holding the space for oneself to experience loss fully and about a woman's love for her husband. I'm fairly new to Substack, so forgive me if this isn't the right space to post- but I'm really appreciating this chat.
I'm so sorry, Ann, about your Dad. I've been there (my Dad passed away of COVID, in 2021; I actually wrote about that in BITTERSWEET, in case that helps). I hope people will leave their thoughts for you right here but I'm also going to do a group chat on this next week, or maybe over the weekend, in your honor, and we'll see what people share. Love to you, in your grief.
I have found the late Andrea Gibson's words to be incredibly powerful and moving.
"My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets. All day I listen to the radio of your memories. Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less. When you cry I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials. Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited. There is nothing I want for now that we are so close I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning. I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not. My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples, I am more with you than I ever was before. Do you understand? It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop. It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise it’s the truth. I promise one day you will say it too– I can’t believe I ever thought I could lose you."
Do you remember your first experience of saying goodbye — to a pet, a summer, a friend?
How did you make sense of it then?
Do you notice any difference in the way you now approach goodbyes?
I do remember my first experience of saying goodbye--to our first dog who was hit by a car in front of our home. I was young, and I can still remember screaming so much that our neighbors came running over, wondering what had happened. I remember feeling angry with my father, who was outside and should've been watching over our dog. It was hard to make sense of it then--I had someone to blame, but I couldn't understand how he cared so little about keeping our sweet girl safe, that it could've been prevented.
Losing my first baby was probably the one time that the loss made absolutely no sense to me, and I had a lot of trouble coming to terms with it. It was the longest stretch of grief and pain I ever experienced, and it took me years to be at peace with it. When one day, it hit me--would I have the three beautiful children I have now, had Kali survived? Most likely not. And it was in that moment that I felt I could make some sense of that horrendous goodbye.
I've lived through many goodbyes--the loss of my mother, father, first baby, grandparents, aunts and uncles, the loss of friendships, the loss of other pets. I don't know that any goodbye has gotten easier for me, though I have realized that my best approach is to allow the grief I'm experiencing and let it linger for as long as I need it to, and also that it's ok to keep moving forward, to keep embracing what life has to offer and make the best of what time I have with those I love.
Thank you so much for these reflections, Nancy. I've had the reverse image wonderings that you had - my mother told me, when I was a teenager, that years before I was born, she and my father lost two babies - one a miscarriage, and another who lived a day or two and then died. Of course this felt so sad to me, and I always wondered what those siblings would have been like. But I also realized that I'd likely not have been born, had they lived.
Susan, it is like a little tug-of-war with the feelings. To think about losing one child brought three others into the world, that I might never have had, but then to wish that baby had lived so I could've raised her and loved her.
My daughter, in her youth struggled with grief over never knowing her big sister. I had pictures of Kali outside her bedroom, in the hallway. I ended up moving the picture frame to another location, because she would cry every time she saw it. Broke my heart.
My oldest, every time we visited the cemetery when he was a toddler, would say as we drove through the cemetery gates, "Kali's house." He would crouch down and kiss the angel statue we had placed there. That was his way of connecting to her.
Sweet sweet children.
Susan, in your writings and in your communications with your Quiet Life Community, you never shy away from examining life in all its fullness. You challenge your readers and followers to embrace every aspect of our human existence, including its often messy, often painful, but also many beautiful moments. Your new book is such gift for families as it explores love and loss. A few days after Easter and about a week before my husband passed in 2021, it was apparent that he would soon need Hospice care. Thankfully, he was at home, and while in a weakened state, he was fully alert and delighted as the family gathered around for what I now regard as an almost sacred day. He delighted as our four grandchildren, who at the time ranged in age from six to 15, came in and out of our bedroom to chat with him. Two of our granddaughters shared moves from dances that they would be taking into their competition season, another granddaughter shared her latest art work, and our grandson regaled Poppy with play-by-plays of his recent lacrosse games. While, like any of us, our grandchildren will never welcome loss and heartbreak, I believe they will be less fearful. Their grandfather's spirit remains strong and is present in all of our gatherings.
I have found the book The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief by Jan Richardson incredibly helpful. I am a clergy person and I use her blessings in all sorts of ways.
Psalm 144
You sound the closing bell, Holy One,
Ringing through time to reshape the future.
Life changing, shattering,
Dreams and hopes revised in an instant.
Unleash the tears and anger
As I offer them to You,
As You take them for healings’ sake,
Someday transforming to peace and calm.
Untie me from old bitterness,
From thoughts of should-have-been
As I find strength in Your unchanging concern,
And take succor from the constancy of Your love.
Flames to Heaven by Debbie Perlman
May peace and love comfort your soul and the soul of your departed loved one. Three sharing: A quote, a resource and a series of paintings by Louis Janmot.
St. Augustine:
"He is there when we think we are alone.
He listens when nothing answers us.
He loves us when everything abandons us."
https://ideas.ted.com/sorrow-and-tragedy-will-happen-to-us-all-here-are-3-strategies-to-help-you-cope/ Lucy Hone
The Poem of the Soul is a series of oil on canvas paintings by Louis Janmot, produced between 1835 and 1881, totaling eighteen paintings and sixteen charcoal drawings. Blessings
Well, I'm still editing, and then editing again my memoir. Here is part of the epilogue. It feels odd sharing the ending of my book, but here it is. Maybe it will touch someone here. This is not my first goodbye, but certinly the most painful one.
During one of the last conversations we had, mom told me that she read that soon after the body dies, it is a few ounces lighter and she wondered if it was the soul leaving the body. Her religious faith evaporated over the years, but she held on to the hope that all of the stuff of life had to be for some reason. I had no answer and felt so sorry for not being able to produce anything close to wisdom on the subject of death.
On her final day, at four in the morning, I woke up in the chair that served as a bed for visitors in her hospice room. I heard her talking to someone near the window. She seemed to be asking questions, though I could not make out the exact words. Her arms were up, with her hands resting underneath her head, looking like she was contemplating the stars as she listened to her visitor talk. I saw no one and sat completely still listening. When she was done, she called my name and said, “I’m not in pain anymore. It’s all over.” I didn’t ask her who she was talking to. It could have been her mother or Aunt Catherine, or my brother Mike who had passed away three years earlier from lung cancer.
Later that day, just a few hours before she died, Mom took my hands in hers and gave me my marching orders to keep the family together, a task that wasn’t always possible. She told me and my brother Kenneth “It’s been good knowing you guys,” as if she was saying her goodbyes after some extended visit that was now over and she had to go home.
My tears flowed into a pool of water in both our hands. She told me that grief is really like a heavy weight you carry for a couple of years, then slowly lightens. For two years, the weight felt unbearable at times. My knees would buckle every time I’d walk down a street alone that we had walked together years earlier, or saw green and yellow speckled pears piled high at the grocery store inviting me to take a taste.
Speaking at Mom’s funeral, I shared that I would see her again somewhere out there in the universe. That is how she talked to me about what happened after death, not heaven or hell, just somewhere else in the universe. I wanted to say that I hoped she wouldn’t have to see all those men who hurt her there, but I didn’t say that. There were relatives of a few of those men sitting in front of me and I knew she wouldn’t approve of their feelings being hurt. There were those lessons she taught me about virtues and also the lesson to look away from things you don’t want to see in that moment. I was never sure how those two things could exist together but I did my best always to live with the contradiction.
In the years that followed, I often thought about her attempt to live a virtuous life as if it could shield her in a life absent of warm embraces. So many experiences would transport me back to childhood, before the age of reason, when life felt it hadn’t touched us yet.
Lots of goodbyes, grandparents, parents, a sibling, friends, pets, divorce (the hardest).
I find it helpful to consider a life as a whole rather than focusing on beginnings or ends, which are such brief moments in the totality of a life. The film Arrival, and the short story that it was adapted from, Ted Chiang’s The Story of Your Life, were complementary in helping me understand that we need to appreciate all parts of any relationship and keep them alive in our memories and in our hearts. This is also particularly helpful when considering forgiveness. “Thank you” in many cases may then be more meaningful than “goodbye.” Lately I’ve been saying “I love you” instead of “goodbye” to many people when I don’t know when I will see them again.
Keith, Thank you for referencing the film Arrival. I will look into it.
Don’t read any reviews beforehand!
Here is a poem I like to give to people when they have suffered a loss:
I'm Free
Don't grieve for me, for now I'm free,
I'm following the path God laid for me,
I took His hand when I heard Him call,
I turned my back and left it all.
I could not stay another day,
To laugh, to love, to work, or play,
Tasks left undone must stay that way,
I found that peace at the close of the day.
If my parting has left a void,
Then fill it with remembered joy,
A friendship shared, a laugh, a kiss,
Oh yes, these things I too will miss,
Be not burdened with times of sorrow,
I wish you the sunshine of tomorrow,
My life's been full, I've savored much,
Good friends, good times, a loved one's touch.
Perhaps my time seemed all too brief,
Don't lengthen it now with undue grief,
Lift up your hearts and share with me,
God wanted me now, he set me free.
When I was 5, my maternal grandfather died. We were very close. He was a truck driver. One day he pulled up in his truck in front of our house and took me for a ride. He put me on his lap so that I could see the road from his perspective. It was an astonishing experience.
There was a big discussion about whether I should be allowed to view his body in the casket. In the end, my family thought it best that I see him lying in state and be allowed to say goodbye. I'm glad they did. What I remember most is coming to an understanding of what spirit is.
I looked at him and felt all the wonderful memories of him and realized that the spark that made that happen was gone from him, but not from me. I knew that for me, through our love and our wonderful memories, he would always be alive.
Susan,
I am so looking forward to having a copy of your new book. I can remember being a child and becoming fiercely attached to a young horse in a meadow, which I was sure had a special spiritual connection to me. As young people, we have an openness to us that enables us to so quickly bond with animals. It's special and deep.
Reading your email I am embarassed to say I cried with recognition and relief. My first loss I remember was our family dog Twiggy. Twiggy was my Dad's hunting companion, and our faithful and sweet black lab who endured being dressed up in many costumes. When we lost her I was busy playing, off in my childhood imaginative world, and although sad, played on.
Now as an adult, I would think that the losses and deaths would come easier. As if with age we would grow wise to these losses, and numb or habituated, but quite the opposite has happened to me. After losing my sweet and fiery dog Pepper, the tears come easily. And yes, reading your email I found myself crying about how the leaves are turning yellow and falling from our Dogwood tree, and Summer is ending. The days are still warm but the signs of another ending are here.
And my husband is quite astonished and doesn't know what to think of me crying about the leaves turning but it is just a deep recognition of the transience of things.
So thank you for writing such bittersweet emails, and for letting me know I am not alone.
and thank you for writing such bittersweet reflections, and for letting me and all our others here know the same.
I was a young child, at a friend's house and saw a dead duck in her pond. I had never seen anything dead and it was quite upsetting. I still have that image vivid in my 'little girl' memory (I am a HSP along with being a quiet deep thinker.)
Susan, I love the much-needed topic of your book.
To answer your question about my first goodbye, I was four years old when my father played chess with me the third time. The first time he had won, the second time we tied, and this third time, I won. My father never played with me again.
I had loved playing with him in ways that were challenging for me. Everybody else—at least it seemed to me—was stuck in childish play like peekaboo (unfair, because most had stopped doing that to me earlier) and twelve-piece puzzles.
I mourned that loss by retreating into the position of an observer of life. I never talked to my dad about it. And when my dad left us about 8 years later, he had been long gone for me. I did not grieve then, as much as I did not have a way to grieve when he stopped playing.
Knowing now that we were both on the spectrum, that story makes much more sense, and I have consciously started to allow myself to grieve in the last few years. I have not succeeded yet.
Looking forward to reading this. And if you ever need a translator for German, let me know.
Congratulations Susan on this beautiful family legacy, and gift to children.
Like many here I’ve had many losses. As a child we left our home country, and our family dog with a friend. I was 10 and had no idea of the pain to come, and there wasn’t conversation about that.
Children generally need stories, words, expression of loss - a topic often too difficult for many of us to know how to approach it. I worked with children in my career and am so grateful to see many more resources like this. ❤️
It is such a strange thought that sorrow and grief are not a part of being whole ...
I have grief and sorrow ... I am not my grief and sorrow.
It's essential to have and live grief and sorrow, to grow in an awareness of all life encompasses.
Beautiful Susan, there can't be enough children books (for grown ups to read too :)).
Children crave to understand life so they can relate to the happenings and build a kinship with all that's living inside themselves and the living beings and books like yours can help them understand.
I love the illustration, what a love and tenderness!! Amazing.
This is a timely post as I sit beside my Dad, likely on the Eve of his death. I welcome your readers to make comments on poetry or writings that have offered them solace and captured the whole experience of walking alongside someone in his dying process. I am a Therapist and have walked many people through their grief. In fact, my next post on my Substack will likely be about how to support a partner in their grief. I'm not looking for advice so much as beautiful words. And, I'm loving this community of tender hearts and bright minds. Thank you, Susan, and others.
I shared a post I wrote about my mom after she died in July. Writing it was therapeutic, as has been responding to the comments from friends and family. Share your grief and it will come back to you as love and compassion. Loss is the great constant of our lives.
https://open.substack.com/pub/ellengirardeaukempler/p/on-coming-unmoored?r=kjez&utm_medium=ios
Ann, I have just read your post on your Substack. It is beautiful - full of the gentle wisdom that only comes from the space that the bereaved occupy. I am so glad that you had your huband by your side and he understood it all.
I wrote about losing my daughter shortly after she was born. It was the most significant moment of my life. My post is here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/anjalimanek/p/the-power-of-story?r=1ylst&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
You may find some recognition in the experience of a fellow bereaved.
Loads of love to you
I look forward to continuing to read about others experience with loss. I just published the following post. While the title pitches it about how to support a partner in their grief (since the focus of my Substack is Couples Therapy), it's really about holding the space for oneself to experience loss fully and about a woman's love for her husband. I'm fairly new to Substack, so forgive me if this isn't the right space to post- but I'm really appreciating this chat.
https://annobrientherapy.substack.com/p/showing-up-in-the-big-moments-in
My heart goes with you
I'm so sorry, Ann, about your Dad. I've been there (my Dad passed away of COVID, in 2021; I actually wrote about that in BITTERSWEET, in case that helps). I hope people will leave their thoughts for you right here but I'm also going to do a group chat on this next week, or maybe over the weekend, in your honor, and we'll see what people share. Love to you, in your grief.
I have found the late Andrea Gibson's words to be incredibly powerful and moving.
"My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets. All day I listen to the radio of your memories. Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less. When you cry I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials. Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited. There is nothing I want for now that we are so close I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning. I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not. My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples, I am more with you than I ever was before. Do you understand? It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop. It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise it’s the truth. I promise one day you will say it too– I can’t believe I ever thought I could lose you."
Wow- that's so touching- thank you. And, I will reread Bittersweet again now that I have had this experience.
Ann,
David Whyte gave me solace when my Dad died.
His poem The Journey
Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again
Painting their
black silhouettes
to an open sky.
Sometimes everything has to be
inscribed
across the heavens
so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.
Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that
first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.
Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out
someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.
You are not leaving.
Even as the light fades quickly now.
you are arriving.
Thank you. It's beautiful.