28/12/2025
A poem of grief.
Written 1 year ago today.
I didnt know how to grieve you,
I didnt know what shape this pain would take,
The only thing I knew to do,
Was to make space for all the feelings.
The only thing I could do was soften the edges of life,
So it could hold us gently as we processed our loss:
The loss of you.
I decluttered our days,
so we could sit in the aftermath of "those" days;
Your last earthly days.
And I held my children in gentle softness,
And together we loved,
and cried and questioned and answered, we talked.
We are still talking of our happinesses and our hurts.
And amid those pain-drenched early days,
we found a natural companion to our grief,
Was joy, and celebration,
of you.
That joy and deep sadness should travel hand in hand,
Some days disproportionately,
Some days equally so:
That our hearts could be broken and simultaneously
Full
Of
Love,
Was a revelation of grief,
I had never pondered before.
That utter despair could live side by side with such joy, and neither would dimish the other,
That my heart can hurt so deeply, even breathing is painful, but along side that, I can feel the joy of your love and presence in my life in your new form.
That both my joy and pain are whole:
Felt in their entirety.
And that is all I knew to do.
To make space.
In the wake of your death.
Make space for all those waves of love and pain,
Of joy and despair,
And seek to soften the journey with love and stillness.
I stood in the trees, on a windswept day,
with hazy sunshine painting the skies golden,
And I felt you there,
Not a "hint" of you,
I felt you, unmistakingly, everywhere,
Unquestionably you,
Unwavering in your love,
And the tears rolled down my cheeks,
And joy filled my heart,
And lifted my soul.
And I wept with love and despair.
It didn't take away the pain of your death,
Both feelings collided ferociously within my core.
And I basked in the highs of meeting your soul in the forest and rode the wave of loss.
It's mindblowing how you can balance such extremes of feelings.
That somewhere in the middle: will be the meeting place of wholeness and emptiness.
And that is where we'll find true healing.
🤍
