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.

But my heart knew. Because I don’t usually start crying when I sing the Wheels on the Bus. And I’ve been driving to this AirBnB for months now but I got really lost yesterday. And also, this is how I put on my shoes this morning. Puts me right back in the days right after the accident when I kept putting my clothes on backwards or inside out.

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.

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

For Grief

John O’Donohue

When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you gets fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice down
Where words have no confidence.
Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
And though this loss has wounded others too,
No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.

Flickers of guilt kindle regret
For all that was left unsaid or undone.

There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.

Days when you have your heart back,
You are able to function well
Until in the middle of work or encounter,
Suddenly with no warning,
You are ambushed by grief.

It becomes hard to trust yourself.
All you can depend on now is that
Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.
More than you, it knows its way
And will find the right time
To pull and pull the rope of grief
Until that coiled hill of tears
Has reduced to its last drop.

Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And, when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time.

“For Grief” by John O’Donohue, from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings (Doubleday, 2008).

The Thing Is

Ellen Bass

The thing is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs:
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes I will take you
I will love you, again.