Figuring Out Life While Aging
Cross posted at https://joanvinallcox.substack.com/p/to-hope-without-knowing
To hope without knowing where you’re going
is to live richly,
learning to tolerate
ambiguity and surprise
and long times of quiet happenstance.
To keep moving when everything changes
is to accept the path,
learning to walk
with different rhythms
in a new landscape.
From The Winter of Listening in David Whyte’s Essentials
So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the new life
I must call my own.
The grey mauve of twilight
clouds the approach
of darkness
as I watch and wait.
Change gestating within hope:
Advent’s promise
teases me with the solstice’s
diminishment of darkness.
I pray to be more
capable of creating
light
before the darkness.
In this busy rational world, how do we recognize our own feelings? When my life companion, my husband of 52 two years, the father of our daughter, was diagnosed with a fatal cancer I just kept on. Like Gladys Knight and the Pips sang, I just “kept on keeping on”. And when he died, I continued the same way – except I was upset that I felt so numb, that I wasn’t grieving, as I imagined grieving to happen. I found myself struggling at journalling but I kept pulsing out strange poems, poems that I came to realize were my grieving coming out in strange ways. Then someone I knew, who had seen my poems on my blog, recognized them as grieving and suggested she write prayers to speak to each poem, and that we put together a book.
Encountering Grief in poetry and prayer is published on Amazon
Excerpt 3 - Difficult Awakening
On the day I wake,
still on my side but
stretching into
the centre of our bed,
I notice I no longer
listen
for kitchen sounds
or the key
opening the door.
Knowing I am attuned
to being alone
is the loss
that feels like a betrayal -
as though I have accepted
your absence.
I am sharing excerpts from Gill’s and my just-published collection of poems and prayers dealing with grief, Encountering Grief – https://www.amazon.com/dp/1999164865 – also in other markets
When I Lost Myself
I am extinct.
No part of me goes forward.
I am ashes
underground.
My stories silenced.
My mutating memories
dismissed.
My sorrows and joys erased:
blankness bracketing grief.
Encountering Grief is available on Amazon.
We hope it provides comfort and understanding.
The grey of dusk slips
down over the lake and land:
a gentle embrace.
Waiting for my eyes to find
enough light
to move through darkness,
I discover
a need for humility.
In a twisting labyrinth
of fears and suspicions,
moving slowly, cautiously,
still stubs toes
and bruises knees,
but even dark dawns reveal
possible paths
that offer
chances to choose
towards light.
I dream of silence,
stillness,
like midnight after snowfall
underground in winter
after summer’s shiftings.
What is the story’s
meaning
after the return,
gripping the chalice
we all must drink from?
Choose the ending
hoped for,
and dance towards,
(with new steps)
the never ending music.
In a dream I cross
the path to my past.
The windows of our home
warm with welcoming golden light.
I enter the unlocked door
and open my mouth to call your name -
and remember -
I don’t live there
anymore.
Cross-posted – https://joanvinallcox.substack.com/p/golden-light
My left eye weeps while
my right stares stubbornly out
at the world’s beauties
and horrors.
What, in this time
and place,
can I do
but acknowledge both?
I watch birds over a lake,
and listen to traffic noise;
beyond thought,
I await what is to be.
Cross-posted – https://joanvinallcox.substack.com/p/my-left-eye-weeps
Like the flame on a burnt out candle
you flicker,
ghosting through me.
A photo triggers new puzzles,
whispering to me
of what I hadn’t searched for.
Lost memories haunt my hopes,
but my hands remember
the truth of your sight.
Cross-posted – https://joanvinallcox.substack.com/p/ghosting
Learning Living 