Grief

Thank you, Window.

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The quest for simplicity has led me by the hand to a lesson in appreciation. After struggling for years with the torture of the moment my mind wakens from sleep and recognises my world, I am learning to receive the morning as a blessing. The fridge whirring, the pigeons cooing, the shouted instructions from the coxes, a train rumbling past, the same dog barking on the beach, the sea breathing. The sun barging into our sea-side cabin nice and early and the sky, the sheer abundance of the big blue sky! Mostly smooth and bright but every now and then, ruffled moody grey. Ever-changing.

The simple joy of watching the infinite sky and the vast sea mirror each other and the thin line where they meet. Eyes that can see unaided. The comfortable air meeting the skin. A steaming hot cup of tea with a handle that’s easy to hold. Hands that are strong enough to hold it. Pain-free fingers that curl around it. The warmth of the steam. The welcome sharpness of tannin. A mind that can discern every detail. A smile that comes easy.

Thank you Morning.

The patience of ordinary things

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

By Pat Schneider.

Room With a View in Santiago

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The old city shutters stood open.

Not to admit the world, for the world was already here; only to let it drift through old granite, through warm air, through the afternoon.

Below, children called, trolleys rattled over stone, shopkeepers laughed, voices crossed and uncrossed like birds above a square.

Nothing argued. Nothing needed to win. The street was not divided.

Beside me, a small dog claimed a borrowed mat with complete confidence that love had already prepared it.

I thought of my son.

I thought of all that seems absent, and of all that love refuses to call lost.

The heart did not deny its longing. The afternoon did not deny its peace.

Neither excluded the other.

Then, without announcement, a smile from a waiter, a bowl of water that had not been requested, churros that had not been ordered, a kindness that carried no invoice.

And I understood, if only for this hour,
that there are moments which cannot be bought because they were never for sale;

moments which cannot be earned because they were never wages;

moments which ask nothing except that they be allowed.

Nothing was missing.

Nothing was excluded.

Nothing was demanded.

Nothing had to justify itself.

The 5pm cathedral bells found their place among the voices, and nothing was disturbed.

Time found its place without disturbing the timeless.

The voices still rose from the street below.

The light still rested upon the granite.
The dog still slept.

Love still loved.

And for this afternoon,
everything already was.

  • By a dad at CORe at the end of his pilgrimage, Camino de Santiago.

A step too far.

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Never imagined one day it would become a part of my body. When I was twenty-three, I romanticized it. I put it on to look professorial and convince people that I was a doctor, in the hope they’d take me seriously.

My friends were flummoxed by the sudden appearance of this thing on my face. Really? Since when?

I could hear my dad thinking, “There go her marriage prospects.”

I hid the fact that it was purely cosmetic. For my eyes only. I was having fun with my heavy-framed Zero power glasses.

All these years, I got away without them. As I approach my 60th birthday, I need 1.5 times magnification if I want to read or write for any more than 15 minutes.

So far, this has happened only once – I’ve been looking for them everywhere while they’ve been perched on my forehead. Yes. Very amusing for Si. Am sure Saagar would’ve had a good laugh too.

It has been suggested that this might be the right time to string them around my neck, so I don’t have to look for them. Nope. Thank you. That just seems a step too far. I haven’t even been tempted to check what’s available online.

Even though my hair is all grey, that’s a kind of declaration I’m not yet ready to make.

Am I eleven and a half?

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( From ‘Wonder Walkers‘ by Micha Archer)

A father, on his daughter’s third death anniversary declared, “I am three today. I started my new life, three years ago. Now, I am a toddler. In a new world, I am learning its new language. Often, I make things up. Right now, I can only ride a bike with three wheels. I know only a few numbers. Some are etched on my memory. I can socialize but before long, must return to familiar spaces. There is so much I don’t know yet, and I am learning to be okay with all my unanswered, perhaps unanswerable questions.”

You cannot enter any world for which you do not have a language. I have been yearning for a better kind of language for as long as I can remember. I am creating my own in a new way. I simply make up words and sentences that I want to say and hear. They may sound silly to the world, but I am finding the balance between courage and fear, between confusion and clarity.

The violence within, frightens me. Sometimes I am very alone with it, and I wonder who I am. Who else can I be? This fear is a kind of intelligence I know but where does it live in me? What am I afraid of? How can I put a language to it? How can I create a friendship with it? And with the confusion, the unknown?

Saagar’s death will not become the primary definition of me, I say.

Does this happening seek my permission or has it already claimed its place?

Am I already eleven and a half?

Like cloud joining cloud.

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Loss Too Deep for Words

When all that seems real is lost,
where words blur and fail,
where intention cannot reach the depth,
where heart hungers
and soul starves.

Only the warmth in the heart of another
finds the pulse,
like cloud joining cloud,
a delicate meeting
before language.

Seeing and seen,
no grandeur, no pretence.

Not words.
Not healing.
Not intention.

Not reviving.
Not demanding.
Not offering.
Not outside, just there, stepped inside.
Rare.

Once isolated, unreachable,
now golden sun emerging, real.

Only that which is real
can touch that which is real.

Nothing survives
that is not love.

  • By Tony Bisson

(Tony is a bereaved father. He wrote this poem expressing what being in the Circle of Rememberance means to him.)