Beauty, art, pain and loneliness

This has been a good week. This doesn’t mean I haven’t been sad, but I have also enjoyed myself. I’m not sure I’ve realised this before, but it does seem possible to be both happy and sad at the same time!

At the weekend I visited some longstanding friends in a beautiful part of the country, and as It happens a place where B and I had had a holiday some years ago. My friends looked after me and made me feel at home. I was able to be myself, a great gift. We went on beautiful walks, and memories of my holiday with B came back to me – happy memories but tinged with sadness. We talked about B and my feelings; another gift. Sometimes we just sat and enjoyed the beauty of nature in their garden. All of this soothed my soul. On Thursday, another longstanding friend came to visit. This time we sat in my garden, and later went for a walk. Again, I was able to be myself and talk about B, and myself. I am so grateful to these friends.

On Wednesday I went to the exhibition, ‘The Loneliness of the Soul’, paintings by Tracey Emin and Edvard Munch. It was very moving, and in fact one of Emin’s paintings almost brought me to tears. I have not experienced this before. I have to admit that in the past some of Emin’s paintings have left me a bit cold, but not these. There was no explanation about the paintings, only a title, but I could sense the pain in them and identify with it. I wouldn’t call them beautiful paintings, but they spoke to me when I was least expecting it.

Until recently, if you asked me, I would say that I feel alone but that I am not lonely, but actually I realise I have got this the wrong way around. I don’t feel alone but I do feel lonely. I am an introvert and, on the whole, am content being on my own. I thought I might worry about being in the house alone after B died, but that hasn’t been an issue. I also have many friends and opportunities to see them, but underneath it all there is a loneliness (of the soul?) simply because B is not here. I miss him so much and, whatever I’m doing, there is this dull ache in the background. Sometimes it is closer to the surface than at other times, but it is always there and the rawness of Emin’s paintings brought it to the surface. I am learning that this is not a bad thing, though. As hard as it is, the pain aids the healing, just as talking through (and writing about) the pain seems to aid healing.

Another type of art I have been perusing is, for a better way of putting it, bereavement poetry. In the past I have looked at various poems about death and thought ‘oh, that’s nice’ or ‘that’s helpful’, and so forth. I now read them with different eyes! I hadn’t noticed, for instance, how many are written from the perspective of the person who has died, which I do find slightly strange – how does the poet know?! – but I guess that’s what ‘s known as poetic license.  Here are some poems that have produced a reaction in me, not always favourable. You may well react differently to them.

First there is Mary Elizabeth Frye’s ‘Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep’:

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

Well, I like the sentiment of this poem until, that is, the very last phrase, and then I just want to shout ‘Yes, you did’ - you did die. B might not be in ‘his grave’ or wherever his ashes have reached, but neither is he here with me. I know B wouldn’t want me to weep over him (although that’s my prerogative, not his!) and I can understand the return to nature, and I like that, but for me I cannot deny that B has died, it has had too great an impact on me.

I feel similarly about ‘Death is Nothing at All’ by Henry Scott Holland:

Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.

Everything remains exactly as it was.
I am I, and you are you,
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
What is this death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just round the corner.

All is well.
Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

I have to admit that I used to like this poem before B died. I get where the poet is coming from and that it was written as a comfort for the bereaved but, frankly, it just feels wrong, and even stirs up something like anger within me. B may be waiting for me, but meanwhile I am hurt! Whether or not, you believe in heaven, death isn’t ‘nothing at all’, it is painful, everything is different, and there is no continuity. That’s the point, it wouldn’t be so difficult otherwise. I’ll accept verses three and four, though, and aim for that.

Then there is Christina Rossetti’s ‘Remember’. I like this as it seems real, acknowledging the finality of death but also the persistence of love. I can’t imagine forgetting B, but one day I hope I will be without the sadness I currently feel and be able to smile about the time we had together. I know that’s what he would want for me:

Remember me when I am gone away,
   Gone far away into the silent land;
   When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
   You tell me of our future that you planned:
   Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
   And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
   For if the darkness and corruption leave
   A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
   Than that you should remember and be sad.

 

‘Echo’, is another Poem by Christina Rossetti, that I like. If only I dreamt of B! I know some bereaved people find it hard dreaming of their loved one, but I would love to dream of B. I have only had one fleeting dream of him, he was at the crematorium with a friend of ours, waving goodbye (!)...  I still can’t even hear his voice. Perhaps one day…

Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low
As long ago, my love, how long ago.

The next poem is ‘Time Does Not Bring Relief (Sonnet II)’ by Edna St Vincent Millay. I only came across it recently and I don’t identify with all of it, and I hope Millay is wrong about time. I don’t want to become stuck and bitter and, certainly, B’s and my last year was the opposite of Millay’s ‘bitter loving’, but the emotions contained in the poem and the last six lines I do identify with. (Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/time-does-not-bring-relief-sonnet-ii-by-edna-st-vincent-millay):

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied   
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!   
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,   
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;   
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.   
There are a hundred places where I fear   
To go,—so with his memory they brim.   
And entering with relief some quiet place   
Where never fell his foot or shone his face   
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”   
And so stand stricken, so remembering him

There are many other poems, as well as some more I could comment on e.g. ‘Farewell’ by Anne Bronte and 'Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone' by W. H. Auden, but this is enough for now! You may well disagree with me, and that’s okay. These things are very personal, and we all have to find what supports us. Take the bits that help!

My favourite poem about death, though,  is still ‘When Great Trees Fall’ by Maya Angelou. I won’t write it out again, as I put it in an earlier post, but for me it expresses the desolation of death whilst ending with hope, and I like that.