341 Grief poems

Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. O, well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! O, well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still! Break, break, break At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

We brought Hannah home today in afternoon sun with a crisp chill in the air on a hill overlooking the bay. Two women with a child and a shovel and a frozen placenta wrapped in aluminum foil placed in a red plastic bag. Hannah was brought into this world some say fourth others say fifth five days before. Before we brought her home. The weekend of rain softened the earth but the cold discouraged the shovel from denting more than the surface. I dug into the earth. The ground weakened beneath the strength I put into the shovel pounding the ground smooth and moist at first then cold and solid. Pounding the ground warmed my arms. I thought good thoughts for Hannah and her mother and prayed for us all. Remembering those who have passed on and those to be born and I thought of my children to be born and I thought of my father who has passed on. Breaking into the cold ground I thought of the day we brought my father home. Dinétah winter had frozen the ground and the earth chipped like ice, slivers of crunchy cold beneath our feet. Our bodies warmed by our work and the earth chipped like an old tree being chopped, taking hours to finish. Our bodies tired from our work and the earth piled high beside the hole like the clouds and just as fluffy. Our bodies natural returning to the ground. I dug into the ground digging out earth that would nourish Hannah digging out life that would embody Hannah and soon a small hole appeared four feet deep. There we stood two women with a child and a shovel and a frozen placenta wrapped in aluminum foil placed in a red plastic bag. The frozen mass of tissue and blood and life was placed in the small hole by Hannah’s mother and I felt her heat tissue and blood and life squatting with bloodied hands and cold earth bringing Hannah home.

It's all like a bad riddle, our widow friend said at the time.If a tree falls in the woods and kills your husband, what can you build from it? That she was speaking quite literally we did not know until the day months later the bench arrived, filling that foyer space in the house the neighbors pitched in to finish. She'd done it, she said, for the sake of the boys, and was never more sure of her purpose than when they were off, playing in the woods their father loved, somewhere out of earshot and she would be struggling in with groceries. For her, it was mostly a place to rest such a weight, where other arms might have reached to lift what they could.  Or like the time we knocked at her door, and finding it just ajar, cautiously entered the sunstruck hallway, and saw her sitting there staring into space, before she heard our steps and caught herself, turning smiling toward us, a book left lying open on the bench beside her.

Whose was that gentle voice, that, whispering sweet, Promised methought long days of bliss sincere! Soothing it stole on my deluded ear, Most like soft music, that might sometimes cheat Thoughts dark and drooping! ’Twas the voice of Hope. Of love and social scenes, it seemed to speak, Of truth, of friendship, of affection meek; That, oh! poor friend, might to life’s downward slope Lead us in peace, and bless our latest hours. Ah me! the prospect saddened as she sung; Loud on my startled ear the death-bell rung; Chill darkness wrapt the pleasurable bowers, Whilst Horror, pointing to yon breathless clay, “No peace be thine,” exclaimed, “away, away!”

I wake to the sound of water, and think, "Mother has died and gone to France," She is at un autre hôtel , speaking French better than ever, while I stare at the fog that has a river in it—the broad Dordogne, making its river noise, as if all the faucets have been left on all night. The river rushing in one direction only, so different from Blackfish Creek, where the sea floods in and back, scrubbing the sand both ways. Well, one travels so things are different. American actors speak French on TV here. Last night they showed Accident Catastrophe about two babies switched in the hospital at birth. One dies. The parents discover the dead child was someone else's and their child is alive in Florida with son père , though sa mère est morte de some disease, who knows? Anyway, Ed Asner, who plays the lawyer, speaks gravelly French, but people have an American demeanor, they pull their hair on the edge of violence. Then each family gives up a piece, and the child ends up more loved than ever, as if it's inevitable. Or so the river is telling me with its one-way simplicity, like gravity. "Alive in the eternal heart of France"—that's Mother I'm thinking about, for some reason, maybe the journal my wife's been keeping, so like the daily letters Mother wrote to sa mère et son père , when her life was flowing through her like the broad Dordogne. And where is she now? Does she wish my father were with her, one of him alive, and one with her? A bell is ringing wildly, each of its peals like a round boat rolling downstream where the river divides around an island only to sweep back into itself somewhere in the fog.

She was cleaning—there is always that to do—when she found, at the top of the closet, his old silk vest. She called me to look at it, unrolling it carefully like something live might fall out. Then we spread it on the kitchen table and smoothed the wrinkles down, making our hands heavy until its shape against Formica came back and the little tips that would have pointed to his pockets lay flat. The buttons were all there. I held my arms out and she looped the wide armholes over them. “That’s one thing I never wanted to be,” she said, “a man.” I went into the bathroom to see how I looked in the sheen and sadness. Wind chimes off-key in the alcove. Then her crying so I stood back in the sink-light where the porcelain had been staring. Time to go to her, I thought, with that other mind, and stood still.

When I came to my mother’s house the day after she had died it was already a museum of her unfinished gestures. The mysteries from the public library, due in two weeks. The half-eaten square of lasagna in the fridge. The half-burned wreckage of her last cigarette, and one red swallow of wine in a lipsticked glass beside her chair. Finally, a blue Bic on a couple of downs and acrosses left blank in the Sunday crossword, which actually had the audacity to look a little smug at having, for once, won.

Like primitives we buried the cat with his bowl. Bare-handed we scraped sand and gravel back into the hole. It fell with a hiss and thud on his side, on his long red fur, the white feathers that grew between his toes, and his long, not to say aquiline, nose. We stood and brushed each other off. There are sorrows much keener than these. Silent the rest of the day, we worked, ate, stared, and slept. It stormed all night; now it clears, and a robin burbles from a dripping bush like the neighbor who means well but always says the wrong thing.

—a found poem Each grief has its unique side. Choose the one that appeals to you. Go gently. Your body needs energy to repair the amputation. Humor phantom pain. Your brain cells are soaked with salt; connections fail unexpectedly and often. Ask for help. Accept help. Read your grief like the daily newspaper: headlines may have information you need. Scream. Drop-kick the garbage can across the street. Don’t feel guilty if you have a good time. Don’t act as if you haven’t been hit by a Mack Truck. Do things a little differently but don’t make a lot of changes. Revel in contradiction. Talk to the person who died. Give her a piece of your mind. Try to touch someone at least once a day. Approach grief with determination. Pretend the finish line doesn’t keep receding. Lean into the pain. You can’t outrun it.

i am still your mother even now even after that doesn't change that's the only thing that doesn't change