on loss

grief

noun

Mental anguish or pain caused by loss or despair: heartache, heartbreak, sorrow

But yet can such a simple sentence really relay the true meaning and depth of this emotion. As I sat in the church today I couldn't help but wonder how deep the well of grief really is.

Have I grieved?

Yes, undoubtedly, but on the periphery of my consciousness I am also aware that I've merely scratched the surface of it all.

As I watched Artemis say goodbye to her father today, I couldn't help but to cry with her. How can one possibly look at another, whose heart is clearing breaking before your very eyes and not grieve? How could I possibly stare into the eyes of this woman, whose 8 year old face I remember, and not want to somehow make it all better?

And yet you know you can't, and perhaps a part of you grieves for that. For knowing that no matter how much this person matters, there really is nothing you can do.

And I wondered if it was my place to feel for her in her grief. After all I did not know the man, I simply had vague memories. Is it not a feeling so intensely private that my tears may be seem to be a mockery of the other, stronger memories of the people who clearly had the right?

Rightly or wrongly, I empathised, I held her and hoped she knew the millions of things I couldn't and didn't know how to say...

the parts i forgot

in her elation she forgot, why it was she swore off relationships where he lived far far away oh so long ago.

tonight she remembered.

tonight she remembered the tears

Photo courtesy of *Vali on Flickr.

Free Falling

Photo Courtesy of AraiGordai on FLickr.

It has been a while since these words meant anything.

This year's love had better last
Heaven knows it's high time
I've been waiting on my own too long
But when you hold me like you do
It feels so right
I start to forget
how my heart gets torn
when the hurt gets thrown
feeling like you can't go on

Turning circles when time again
cuts like a knife
if you love me got to know for sure
cos it takes something more this time
than sweet sweet lies
before i open up my arms and fall
losing all control
every dream inside my soul

and when you kiss me
on that midnight street
sweep me off my feet
singing ain't this life so sweet

From "This Year's Love" by David Gray


Think I'm free falling. For the first time in a long long time. And it makes me smile.

She is...

twitterpated

to be twitterpated

and you,
a windrose, a compass,
my direction, my description of the world.

-Ian Burgham

Most people who know her know of her silly preposterous chain of events that will ultimately lead to her wedding. These flights of fancy aside however she has been worrying lately that she has become rather jaded and desensitised in matters of the heart. She doesn't know if this is simply growing up or if she is just in some way... broken.

She used to fall helplessly, hopelessly, accidentally in love. It has been years since this last happened. She used to pray that she be made insensitive a la Jann Arden. Now that she might possibly be that, she misses what she was. Maybe it wasn't so bad after all. Those lowest lows that made the highest highs possible.

She now thinks through it more. She's more afraid to take that blind leap of faith into the abyss. And because of this, when things go pear shaped, she doesn't weep and feel the raw emotions she used to. She just accepts that it wasn't working or wasn't going to work and moves on.

She feels... just not so acutely.

She still loves the sappy love songs. But ultimately the ones that reverberate in her soul are the ones that make no promises of everafter. She sees more romanticism in the ones that don't. The ones that see their human failings and hope that their personal brand of love is enough, despite those failings. The ones that are simply more honest. Like this one....

"And who am I to tell you that I would never let you down
That no-one else could love you half as much as I do now
And who am I to tell you I'll always catch you when you fall
Well I, I wouldn't be myself at all
I wouldn't be myself at all, at all"

Who Am I by Will Young

At the end of the day, for her it's the words. It's always been the words. It's not the Alexandrite ring, the daisies or the white marquee. She has moved from Frost to Donne. Maybe it's not desensitisation. Maybe it's just that now, more than ever, the honesty matters. It's the words...

Photo from the collection of Jeanine Payer.