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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
"Time Does Not Bring Relief" from Collected Poems. Copyright 1931
"Out of sheer taciturnity the ceiling listens
to the fall of the ancient leafless rain,
to feathers, to whatever the night imprisoned;
so I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache."
Pablo Neruda
Hope today is better
ReplyDeleteWaves pass, until another comes. Instead of bringing uplift, it brings turmoil. But there are troughs of peacefulness. Enjoy them in between the waves. There is a distant shore.
ReplyDeleteHugs
ReplyDeleteHi you were obviously feeling very down again when you wrote this and I hope you’ve managed to pick up a bit by now. I'm also wondering if you followed the advice of one of your readers and asked to be tested for Lyme disease?? Did you know that as well as all the physical symptoms you experience some of these awful feelings associated with prolonged grief could also be connected to a diagnosis of Lyme disease? The more I read about this disease and the people who suffer from it, the more I wonder why it’s not more widely publicised and investigated. By what ever means, I just hope you find some peace soon.
ReplyDeletePrimary care doc said that I have the marker for RA. That is the sed rate in my blood test. And that in all probability I was tested for Lyme when I was first diagnosed. She's a new doc to me and unfamiliar with my past .... or my character. I'm not happy with her but until I can find a better one to take my insurance I'm stuck.
ReplyDeleteI will be visiting my RA physician in May. I will also bring up the Lyme issue with her. If they've tested me for it already and it was negative, I doubt they'll do it again.
As to grief. There is no time limit to how long people grieve. It is a common misconception that people get over it and no longer grieve. Coping is what you learn to do. And the circumstances of the death will affect how well you cope. My husband died of a very violent heart attack in the middle of the night during an ice storm that shut down the entire midwest. I'm not sure there is a way to ever stop the sounds and images of that night from haunting me. The sound of his wedding ring sliding along the rails of the headboard echo each time my rings slide along the same rails. Still grief is much better than the PTSD they treated me for the first two years. I allow it to happen, rather than perform another burial. And if you review the blogs from that time, you'll find I'm a lot more cheerful than I was back then.