Exequy on his wife

ACCEPT, thou shrine of my dead saint,  Instead of dirges this complaint;  And for sweet flowers to crown thy herse  Receive a strew of weeping verse  From thy grieved friend, whom thou might'st see  Quite melted into tears for thee.     Dear loss! since thy untimely fate,  My task hath been to meditate  On thee, on thee! Thou art the book,  The library whereon I look,  Tho' almost blind. For thee, loved clay,  I languish out, not live, the day....  Thou hast benighted me; thy set  This eve of blackness did beget,  Who wast my day (tho' overcast  Before thou hadst thy noontide past):  And I remember must in tears  Thou scarce hadst seen so many years  As day tells hours. By thy clear sun  My love and fortune first did run;  But thou wilt never more appear  Folded within my hemisphere,  Since both thy light and motion,  Like a fled star, is fall'n and gone,  And 'twixt me and my soul's dear wish  The earth now interposed is....     I could allow thee for a time  To darken me and my sad clime;  Were it a month, a year, or ten,  I would thy exile live till then,  And all that space my mirth adjourn--  So thou wouldst promise to return,  And putting off thy ashy shroud  At length disperse this sorrow's cloud.     But woe is me! the longest date  Too narrow is to calculate  These empty hopes: never shall I  Be so much blest as to descry  A glimpse of thee, till that day come  Which shall the earth to cinders doom,  And a fierce fever must calcine  The body of this world--like thine,  My little world! That fit of fire  Once off, our bodies shall aspire  To our souls' bliss: then we shall rise  And view ourselves with clearer eyes  In that calm region where no night  Can hide us from each other's sight.     Meantime thou hast her, earth: much good  May my harm do thee! Since it stood  With Heaven's will I might not call  Her longer mine, I give thee all  My short-lived right and interest  In her whom living I loved best.  Be kind to her, and prithee look  Thou write into thy Doomsday book  Each parcel of this rarity  Which in thy casket shrined doth lie,  As thou wilt answer Him that lent--  Not gave--thee my dear monument.  So close the ground, and 'bout her shade  Black curtains draw: my bride is laid.     Sleep on, my Love, in thy cold bed  Never to be disquieted!  My last good-night! Thou wilt not wake  Till I thy fate shall overtake:  Till age, or grief, or sickness must  Marry my body to that dust  It so much loves; and fill the room  My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.  Stay for me there: I will not fail  To meet thee in that hollow vale.  And think not much of my delay:  I am already on the way,  And follow thee with all the speed  Desire can make, or sorrows breed.  Each minute is a short degree And every hour a step towards thee....     'Tis true--with shame and grief I yield--  Thou, like the van, first took'st the field;  And gotten hast the victory  In thus adventuring to die  Before me, whose more years might crave  A just precedence in the grave.  But hark! my pulse, like a soft drum,  Beats my approach, tells thee I come;  And slow howe'er my marches be  I shall at last sit down by thee.     The thought of this bids me go on  And wait my dissolution  With hope and comfort. Dear--forgive  The crime--I am content to live  Divided, with but half a heart,  Till we shall meet and never part.  Henry King, Bishop of Chichester

Pam's things..

Pam had this cat picture in her living room. I found it in a box last week. I brought it back here after we had to sort through her things. I've put it on my dressing table. She loved cats, so do I. Her cat Ellie who she called Ellie Maypoles was adopted by her neighbour Alan, who Ellie had pretty much gone to live with anyway. Ellie is still having her love affair with Alan according to a friend here in Santa Fe who told me she'd met him by chance in Newport on her last visit there. We met this guy called Alan with a cat called Ellie who knew Pam! She said he never stopped talking about Ellie. Wow he loves that cat! Pam saw Alan get tazered by the police right outside his house not long before she died.

Do it perfectly..

Yesterday after telling my dad that I'm in pain again because of this orrid TMJ he said what he always says, "Oh no not again! My daughters are supposed to be perfect!" Perhaps that's where this drive comes from to grieve perfectly, to do everything perfectly. This week I was saying to a woman, "But I can't accept this, I can't! I've read the books and the stages they describe and they all say you have to come to a place of acceptance. That there is denial, and anger and bargaining and depression and then acceptance, well I'm sorry but I can't do it perfectly. I can't accept it,"

She said, "Well maybe you don't have to accept it and maybe you can throw out all those terms, maybe you will never accept it." I was about to start talking on and on again when I did a kind of delayed double take.

The books don't say that. Maybe I'll throw the books out as well and stop searching for the perfect way to do it.

music to help stare at the ground..

;

Smile

Frying an egg this morning this face was smiling up at me ... is something trying to tell me to lighten up?

Permission for Depression

Duino Elegies

We wasters of sorrows!
How we stare away into sad endurance beyond them
trying to foresee their end! Whereas they are nothing else
than our winter foliage, our somber evergreen, one
of the seasons of our interior year, - not only
season-they're also place, settlement, camp, soil, dwelling.

Rilke.

Still whacked out by the holidays.

I forgot that I have this file full of handouts on grief that I got from the hospice. I'm so exhausted emotionally. I've been so full of rage and hatred and sadness. Anyway in this file the majority of handouts are on dealing with the holidays. Here's one quote, 'Unfortunately American cultural mores place a virtual embargo on sadness during the holiday season and the consequent mandate to be jolly and cheerful makes the depressed person feel worse.' And another, 'Much holiday depression stems from the almost inevitable disappointment that follows the grandiose expectations people carry over from childhood based either on real memories or unfulfilled fantasies.'

I'm putting this post up so that next year I can look at it to a. remind me to read the handouts and b. read the handouts!

One more thing I just read, it's a bit cheesy but it just helped me to not feel alone.

The mother of a dead child
will always weep
at Christmas time
on that you can depend.

No matter how many people
or how many presents
the pulsating void that seems too large
for her heart to hold
keeps on drawing her attention
back to the child who's missing.

As others laugh and play
her thoughts fly away
to Christmases past
or a lonely cemetery.

To a face her heart aches to be kissing

The face of the child who's missing.

by Fay Harden.

Tomorrow it will be three and a half years..

Note to self read this next December.