Blog o’ Gnosis

This morning I got the news that the only son of an old friend of mine is dead, a suicide at age 18. I have been sitting with this unbearable loss all day, wondering how it is that we pick ourselves up and go on with our lives after such a tragedy. He had had a turbulent youth and was beginning to exhibit signs of a mental instability that runs in his family. I don’t know all the details but I know very well the effort involved in trying to protect and shepherd an unstable youth into adulthood before he causes irrevocable harm to himself or others. It is exhausting, thankless, relentless. We do as much as we can, and being human there is always a moment we let down our guard, our constant vigilance. It is called rest, sleep.

I try to imagine this loss happening in my own family, and find that my psyche won’t allow it. I imagine though that the loss of a child might be easier to bear if it had come at a moment when I was doing everything I could to prevent it. If it came at the one time when I heard a sound and decided not to investigate, I don’t know how I would bear it. Grief like that, as my friend Donald says, is a Force of Nature.

The weather today has been perfect for a prolonged meditation on grief. All day long a storm has been building, the high, thick clouds beginning to sprinkle and then not; instead, more clouds come in, creating deepening shades and layers of gray that make it impossible to imagine why the downpour is being withheld. Stepping outside with Vince just now, the wind is whipping the trees and the faintest of sprinkles is spitting its way out of the gathering dark. I think when the sky does finally open, it will do so with a vengeance.

I have had two fragments of poetry going through my head today. The first is Paul Simon’s great line in “Graceland”: “Losing love is like a window in your heart. Everybody sees you’re blown apart, everybody feels the wind blow.” This popped into my head as I heard the news of Jeremiah’s death. The actual wind, combined with the wind blowing through my friend’s life and my life, has also left me with a vague nausea, a feeling of vertigo as though the earth under my feet were in constant motion.

The second fragment came similarly unbidden, and is from Doreen Valiente’s beautiful Charge of the Goddess: “Let my worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals.” Why this celebratory pronouncement should come through on a day obviously custom-made for grief, I don’t pretend to understand. It probably has to do with my mind’s quirky insistence on handing me paradox whenever I think I have certainty, combined with an Aries trait of always jumping to the next thing just a little before its time. Maybe it is also reminding me that grieving the loss of a child is an act of love.

It is my birthday today, a day custom-made for celebration. And in spite of having a heavy heart, I am enjoying the luxury of taking the day off to eat cake and let my heart feel whatever it wants. Right now, I am tired of grief, it is fading and in the hollow carved by the winds a row of candles is burning. The storm has started outside. All is as it should be.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 15th, 2006 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Family, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.