Tag Archives: dealing with loss

Alfredo Marco Pradil Pexels
Weekend Write-Off

Guest for a Lifetime

"You have to understand," she said.  "Grief lasts forever."

     "Like death," I said.

     "Like death.  Except death is someone else's condition, and grief is all yours."

     "I feel worse now than I did shortly after she died."

     "And you'll feel even worse next year.  And worse the year after that, unless you find a way to
transform your grief."

     "We're back to that."

     "We've never left it," she said.  "Grief comes to you all at once, so you think it will be over all at 
once.  But it is your guest for a lifetime."

     "How should I treat this gift?  This unwelcome, uninvited guest."

     "Think of the one who sent it to you," she said.

The above excerpt is from a conversation Roger Rosenblatt shared in Kayak Morning: Reflections on Love, Grief, and Small Boats. See my post, Beside Myself, for my thoughts inspired by reading this memoir.

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Bernstein Amber Gem
Poetry

Reptile in Amber

If I get a pet snake
I'll name him Nigel

inspired by "Making Plans for . . ."
as I drove home late at night
reminded of Geoff

who like a frustrated spouse
told me I didn't discipline our campers enough
and always made him the heavy.
But we laughed together when we heard 
XTC sing about Nigel
on our lunch break.

And I think of him every time I hear it
his laugh ever present in the quirky name
though some crazy cancer
took him before he could ripen into a man old enough to carry a name like Nigel

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