It’s my friend Helen’s 86th birthday. We got together recently to celebrate, and just to catch up. Helen is doing fine, she says. The kids are doing well, the grandkids are wonderful. Her life is good. But she wonders why she’s still alive. Since Russ died, almost 20 years ago, she’s just waiting for her own end. She had a great life, with him. Over 50 years. They had kids, grandkids, a good time together, as a family. They lived a peaceful life; an attentive life. He had his projects; she painted pictures, knitted mittens for everyone. Found precious buttons to decorate sweaters for grandkids as they came along. They tended sheep; she carded wool, spun out yarn. They made maple syrup together for a while until one year the plaster ceiling over the old wood stove finally collapsed into the syrup vat after so many years of being loosened by steam from the boiling sap. They did so much together. Now, she says, she’s okay, but it’s a lonely venture.
It made me wonder about myself. I wasn’t married to you. Our love wasn’t that kind of bond. But you were my person, so young. My signpost of how a life could be, with a little passion and effort and faith.
Now, it’s been almost 8 years since you’ve been gone. And I’m pretty good. Grief seems more like just the color of my walls, the backdrop of my life, than something wrenching and impossible Loss happens. Things shift. We somehow keep moving on. The questions continue.
The following are a few notes from the Letters on how to keep loving the world:
*****
“This is what I would talk with you about, if you were here: how to sink into the juicy, jeweled brilliance, the fierce wrenching fire of loving the world even though everything will be swept away.”
“I walk in the woods this morning to the pond, where a green heron sleeps in the rain, head tucked into a wing, peeping up for a moment to see us, then down again. A not-so-easy day for a bird. Struggles and pains gnaw at all our lives, wild and human alike. How much we all carry, each in our particular ways: the suffering of being alive, the flash of beauty, the indwelling loveliness, the raw edges that press us down. The world – the heart of all that is – wrestles and loves, labors and gives birth.”
“How can so much of the love my heart poured out in your direction be going nowhere now? Does it just spill into the universe, grow thin and pale, disappear? Or does it somehow collect, settle into a special pocket of wonderful things, help to hold up the great going-forward of the world?
I have to think that this is true.”
“Will missing you last forever? How do I let anything go? How does the world keep moving on if losing even one person is so wrenchingly hard? How do I get my mind, my heart, to leap over this – the abyss where you used to live? Impossible.
But, Bodi is happy – sleeps pressed against my leg, his soft ear flopped over my knee. His breath makes a little damp spot on the satin comforter. Some things last for a while, I guess; habits, and small loves.”
“I hope that your way forward, if such a thing exists, is gentle and kind. I hope you can settle into rest. I hope you are swimming in love – that gigantic, quivering sea that is so much more than we know. I hope you can see that I’m happy; that things are okay; that I still love the world, even though you’re not in it anymore; that my breath still sighs with love for you every once in a while.”
*****
In whatever ways grief touches us, we continue to be part of life. We keep loving the world, one breath at a time, one small imperfect act of caring after another. We co-participate in the “great going forward” of the world, sometimes despite ourselves, mostly blind to what’s ahead. We are part of the crazy conundrum of fierce love and great grief and the everyday journey of carrying on.
We may never know how our courage and faithfulness and willingness to plod along, even in the darkness, contributes to the world.
I’m guessing we’d be surprised.