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Joyous Lamentations & Remembering Our Loved Ones

23:26 / 16.07.06

An important part of grieving is the process of remembering and sharing stories about people no longer with us.

Sometimes we need to do this because a loved one has died. Sometimes we do this because an important relationship we had is gone, not because of death but because of a breakup or divorce.

Grief comes in many forms. We can experience it for aspects of ourselves, for older ways of being and lost ways of seeing. In all cases the most healing thing we can do is honor the importance and uniqueness of those who have affected us profoundly.

The gift of telling the story is returned by the act of listening. We are enriched and transformed by the sacred details imparted to us even when we do not know the bereaved or the departed. We are reminded to appreciate, we are offered the chance to laugh, and we are given permission to mourn.

*

00:03 / 17.07.06

she meticulously
cut out tiny
leaf shapes
from the inner tubes of old bike tires
and threaded them together
row upon row
until she had made for herself
a skirt, a haltertop
a tail
and a dragon mask

she raised mealworms
on a diet of apples and oatmeal
to make them tastier
when she toasted them and baked them
into cookies

she was never afraid to speak to people she didn't know
she was never afraid of what others might think of her
she was always so young and so old

she was more
otherworldly
than any human I ever knew
and yet
so perfectly
down-to-earth

I bought her old laptop from her.
She had fried
the hard-drive, literally—
the inside of the case was scorched—
taking it to the beach and on boats
to record her dolphin research.
"Can your mother recover my data?"

We couldn't. But the last thing
we have of her
is 720 words
her lover recovered from the new laptop
she left sleeping peacefully
in the wreck of their car.

12:33 / 17.07.06

id,

Those 720 words combined with your own reveal an amazing person.
I hope her vision comes to pass.

13:26 / 17.07.06

Every time the numbers on a clock line up the same I call your name three times.
Every time I see something beautiful that cuts through my heart I call your name three times.
When I am afraid or paralyzed in a nightmare I call your name three times.

When I hated myself, you who suffered the most because of me, gave me absolution and acceptance.

For all you were to me I was too self absorbed to notice that you were dying. I just believed the doctors that you were sick. I thought you were immortal because I could not imagine you not being here. When the stranger in the checkout line told said I was lucky you were still alive I was confused. I knew what she said was important but not why.

I want to believe I told you how much I love you that night. I want to believe that in my rush to go out I still stopped and told you. I can only tell myself that of course you know, because you know me better than anyone. But it makes me afraid because you died alone without me.

It's been three years since you told me you loved me. Three years since I bowed my head down so you could kiss me on the eyelid or cheek. Three years since I knew I was without a doubt a good person because you told me I was.
I know with a child's faith that nothing evil can stand up to you and that I must not be evil because you love me.
You are my sister, my mother, and my Empress for always.

19:35 / 17.07.06

my last post was a bit, er heavy...here's one to balance it a bit.

When my Nana first met my partner PB, she commented in her gravel-ly smokers' voice:

"He's too short for you."

A few years later she commented:

"You're too tall for him."

..and I knew she liked him at last.

Tryphena Absent

20:17 / 18.07.06

My friend Sam, how is it possible that you have not seen the events of the last five years? So radicalised, politics hung around you like a cloud. We lost touch and I don't know the method that you used to kill yourself but I knew you. I want to hear you compound five years of terrorism with that fine sense of anarchy that characterised every other word. That political sense, never childish, always passionate, not an angry young man but an angry person. So old for someone so uneducated. The anti-war protests in 2003 would have been very different, angrier, more proportionate for me if you had been alive. I miss your fight, without you I don't know how to bear the brunt of the illogic that these people speak, I don't know how to be viscerally angry. 18 months and it would have swept outward again. Sam, my Sam, the things I should have done with you. What a force we could have been, tougher on the front, I gave it a go but it was sad without you, they didn't understand the calm in the middle.

Sam, expression of my anger. Leave your band behind and fight with me Sam. Take me away from the mainstream, more dynamic, tougher than the socialists. Sensible. You should have been a China Mieville you stupid, stupid man. How dare you suicide you bastard.