lent

In being with dying, we arrive at a natural crucible of what it means to love and be loved. And we can ask ourselves this: Knowing that death is inevitable, what is most precious today? — Roshi Joan Halifax, from Being with Dying

When someone we love is hurting or dying … These are often the times that call us to a higher response — to simply bear witness to another person’s life journey — not to engage in it, but to stand beside them in loving support. The focus is not to make the pain go away, but rather to let that person know that they are not alone and that we trust them to do whatever it is they need to do to go through that particular experience. … Sometimes we forget that our job is not to fix the situation at hand, but rather to help lift the burden of the other person by letting them know we care enough to show up.  — Judith Johnson from ‘The Power of Bearing Witness’ on HuffingtonPost.com

Parkinson’s Disease — Galway Kinnell

While spoon-feeding him with one hand
she holds his hand with her other hand,
or rather lets it rest on top of his,
which is permanently clenched shut.
When he turns his head away, she reaches
around and puts in the spoonful blind.
He will not accept the next morsel
until he has completely chewed this one.
His bright squint tells her he finds
the shrimp she has just put in delicious.
Next to the voice and touch of those we love,
food may be our last pleasure on earth—
a man on death row takes his T-bone
in small bites and swishes each sip
of the jug wine around in his mouth,
tomorrow will be too late for them to jolt
this supper out of him. She strokes
his head very slowly, as if to cheer up
each separate discomfited hair sticking up
from its root in his stricken brain.
Standing behind him, she presses
her cheek to his, kisses his jowl,
and his eyes seem to stop seeing
and do nothing but emit light.
Could heaven be a time, after we are dead,
of remembering the knowledge
flesh had from flesh? The flesh
of his face is hard, perhaps
from years spent facing down others
until they fell back, and harder
from years of being himself faced down
and falling back in his turn, and harder still
from all the while frowning
and beaming and worrying and shouting
and probably letting go in rages.
His face softens into a kind
of quizzical wince, as if one
of the other animals were working at
getting the knack of the human smile.
When picking up a cookie he uses
both thumbtips to grip it
and push it against an index finger
to secure it so that he can lift it.
She takes him then to the bathroom,
where she lowers his pants and removes
the wet diaper and holds the spout of the bottle
to his old penis until he pisses all he can,
then puts on the fresh diaper and pulls up his pants.
When they come out, she is facing him,
walking backwards in front of him
and holding his hands, pulling him
when he stops, reminding him to step
when he forgets and starts to pitch forward.
She is leading her old father into the future
as far as they can go, and she is walking
him back into her childhood, where she stood
in bare feet on the toes of his shoes
and they foxtrotted on this same rug.
I watch them closely: she could be teaching him
the last steps that one day she may teach me.
At this moment, he glints and shines,
as if it will be only a small dislocation
for him to pass from this paradise into the next.

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. … On the other hand, wretchedness–life’s painful aspect–softens us up considerably. … When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody’s eyes because you feel you haven’t got anything to lose–you’re just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We’d be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn’t have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together. ― Pema Chödrön from Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living.

Blessing for the Dailiness of Grief
by Jan Richardson from The Cure for Sorrow
~
Sorry I am
to say it,
but it is here,
most likely,
you will know the rending
most deeply.
~
It will take your breath away,
how the grieving waits for you
in the most ordinary moments.
~
It will wake
with your waking.
~
It will
sit itself down
with you at the table,
inhabiting the precise shape
of the emptiness
across from you.
~
It will walk down the street
with you
in the form of
no hand reaching out
to take yours.
~
It will stand alongside you
in every conversation,
nearly unbearable
in its silence
that fairly screams.
~
It will
brush its teeth
with you at night
and climb into bed
with you
when finally
you let go
of this day.
~
Even as it goes
always with you,
it will still manage
to startle you with
its presence,
causing you to weep
when you enter
the empty kitchen
in the morning,
when you spread fresh sheets
on the bed you shared,
when you walk out
through the door
alone
and pass back through it
likewise.
~
It is here
you will know it best—
in the moments
that made up the rhythm
of your days,
that fashioned the litany
of your life,
the togethering
you will never know
in the same way again.
~
But I will tell you
it is here, too,
that your solace lies.
It will wait for you
in those same moments
that stun you
with their sorrow.
~
I cannot tell you how,
but it will not cease
to carry you
in the cadence that has
forever altered
but whose echo will persist
with a stubbornness
that will surprise you,
bearing you along,
breathing with you still
through the terrible
and exquisite
ordinary days.

Grief does not change you … It reveals you. ― John Green from The Fault in our Stars

“Isn’t it weird … the way you remember things, when someone’s gone? …  all I could think about was that day … It’s even worse when someone’s sick for a long time … You forget they were ever healthy, ever okay. It’s like there was never a time when you weren’t waiting for something awful to happen. … it’s only been in the last few months that I’ve started remembering all this good stuff, funny stuff … I can’t believe I ever forgot it in the first place.”
“You didn’t forget … You just couldn’t remember right then. But now you’re ready to, so you can.”
― Sarah Dessen from The Truth About Forever

You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to. ― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate … We misconstrue … We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect the shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. … In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be “healing.” A certain forward movement will prevail … after which this hypothetical healing will take place … Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself. — Joan Didion, from The Year of Magical Thinking

You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp. ― Anne Lamott

Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope. ― Elizabeth Gilbert from Eat, Pray, Love