Figuring Out Life While Aging
After happy-ever-after comes the long goodbye, wrenching and awkward. The first year is numbness, overwhelmed with tasks, and learning new ways The second is weeping and anxiety; tasks continue to overwhelm and yet soothe. A structure to the daze.
My contradictions engulf
my secret spaces
sliding me spiral-wise into
darkness.
Sunlit hiddenness.
Forced growth.
Splintered stems.
Exposed roots.
Is there any time
beyond waiting?
Can composted years
be infertile?
“April is the cruelest month” - T S Eliot Green mist rubbing raw branches, sap pulsing demands, taunting winds pushing unavoidable changes. Absent again. the old path blocked, obscured, closing off. Blossoms mocking this waiting time. What new fruit will grow now?
Walking through the grounds of the demolished building I wonder how to describe grief. There’s the sudden voice wobbles, of course, and the repeated resentments of accusations that I’m doing so well. as though sleeping, eating, and keeping the house going deserves some special commendation. Sometimes I wonder if maybe it shows me being unfeeling, not caring. I wonder how grief behaves: the irrational refusals and avoidances; not wanting company, or to be alone; resenting the new tasks. So download another distraction, wonder again who I am now, and what I might want not to do or, maybe, choose to do.
The sharp chill of a cold spring day as Good Friday reigns over Easter.
I wake sulky, reluctant, reviewing my resentments, lonely, yet don’t want visitors. Nothing satisfies: the sun is too bright; Our home too quiet. I want to hide. Another funeral - sitting huddled within myself, fists clenched, trying not to listen, wanting to leave, shaking. I crave - a softening in my throat, eyes that don’t itch, a conversation no longer available. Somewhere there is joy, waiting, perhaps, to flash through me, again, but now I’m grieving.
Grief, like an infant
held to my heart
whimpers,
and I don’t know
how to comfort.
I walk on,
hoping for silence,
past homes
where death has
also visited
on this dark street.
If I could weep,
if I could mourn,
if I could comfort
(if i could silence
this abandoned child),
Perhaps I could rest.
Like a sign finally read after years of passing by,
turning down the path I’m required to take,
asking what happens in this time called “grief”.
There’s work to be done, putting a life away,
hidden fears discovered, and stories told of
what I was too close to see in our shared time.
The busyness loosens and tasks frustrate.
Suddenly I am distraught and yelling, lost
and alone, shaking in anger.
Sometimes my voice wobbles and eyes tear.
Sometimes I am happy in a new moment.
Sometimes I don’t know who I am.
Some who have walked this path tell me
it never ends, but it has corners of comfort
and grows less steep and rough.
I want to be . . .
I don’t know what this “new normal” is
yet.
Bardo
In some schools of Buddhism, bardo … is an intermediate, transitional, or liminal state between death and rebirth. – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardo
The sun angles wrong on my eyelids;
I resist waking in this strange place.
I feel my father’s room;
The plants gone, the walls striped
Of the photos of the many people he loved,
The chairs and chest huddled together,
The bed barren, the lounge chair empty,
His life in boxes
To be removed.
Learning Living 