Ten years in and I’ve got nothing.

My brain didn’t recognize the date. Maybe that’s because I’ve been on grandmother duty this summer and babies don’t read calendars. Or I’ve got summer brain. Or pandemic brain. Or old brain. Anyway, I didn’t know the date and here we are on the tenth anniversary and my brain is not with this picture.

So now that my brain has caught up with my heart, I’ve got nothing. Ten years of missed birthdays, milestones, family. I’ve got nothing.

But that isn’t true. I have friends, and family, and a new grand baby, and work that I love, and community. And I’m so grateful for all of it. All of you.

So here’s to Robert, Ana Maria, Samantha, and Veronica, whose loss ten years on is still just as hard and sad and heartbreaking. And here’s to community and family and friends. And especially to Christine, who found exactly the poem I needed but couldn’t find on my own. Take care of each other. The world can be a hard and sad and scary place and we need each other more than I can say.

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Blessing for the Brokenhearted

by jan richardson

There is no remedy for love but to love more.
     —Henry David Thoreau

Let us agree
for now
that we will not say
the breaking
makes us stronger
or that it is better
to have this pain
than to have done
without this love.

Let us promise
we will not
tell ourselves
time will heal
the wound,
when every day
our waking
opens it anew.

Perhaps for now
it can be enough
to simply marvel
at the mystery
of how a heart
so broken
can go on beating,
as if it were made
for precisely this—

as if it knows
the only cure for love
is more of it,

as if it sees
the heart's sole remedy
for breaking
is to love still,

as if it trusts
that its own
persistent pulse
is the rhythm
of a blessing
we cannot
begin to fathom
but will save us
nonetheless.

From The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief (c) Jan Richardson (Wanton Gospeller Press, 2016). janrichardson.com