Tag: Mourning and loss

The Final First: Love Endures

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806 –1861

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

For 53 years the couple would awaken and read or recite or hear a friend saying these immortal words. It was a January ritual begun on the first wedding anniversary.

On January 11, 2023, in love and remembrance only one mouthed the words in the cold morning. It was comforting.

Today, September 25th is a day that should have no special import but from now on may be a day for mourning, or not. On waking, the first thought, the first need was to hear this poem. The accompanying memory was of a soft slow issuance of breath, an afterthought it seemed. That breath came after a long pause and seemed to linger as it floated outward and upward and returned on the gossamer wings of a butterfly to settle with a soft caress. My Bert smiled. It was the final, soundless aspiration that filled the room.

But today is a day to put aside maudling sentimentality and contemplate present reality. Today marks the first year of living a strange unfamiliar singleness.

It was a poignant year not of mourning but of doing. Too busy advocating, informing, educating, sharing, caring, remembering, living. There were a few tears outweighed by a plethora of remembered joys. Tears wiped away within the ever surrounding arms of family and friends.

Today I meander through our song, gaze at albums, twinned biographies, and I laugh at our shared moments of joy or sigh at our shared moments of grief and wonder at the miraculous journey of two lives entwined.

And today I share our love poem with friends, families, all who love and mourn and remember their loved ones who are gone but have not left.

The Meander:  Love endures. There is an everlasting delicacy in loving someone after they are gone.  There is blessing in memory.

The Novelty of Widowhood

It is a New Year and there is so much that’s new. I have a new schedule. I have a new life of living without another, the one who had been partly absent, but only partly.

Most bewildering is the new ID.  I am signing documents that ask for my marital status. I hover over Married then move to Single and then uncomfortably to Widow.  I place a tick as the status is officially correct, officially.

I have no problem with the word widow.  The hesitancy comes from the fact that for such a long time I was a widow in waiting or in training but now that it is a fact the training turns out to have been woefully inadequate. How do you own a state of ever mutating feeling?

It has nothing to do with living alone. I passed that test long ago. Yet somehow it was incomplete because he was still here. He was less present than before but much more than total absence.

I am beginning to think that I have major fault lines that need mending. Family and friends remind me that the ‘Firsts” are stressful, demanding and catalysts for deep mourning that may resemble depression. I am told to mourn, to grieve and take time to BE. I understand, yet somehow this widow identity has so far been the worst issue in the process for me. How trite!

The first Christmas has come and gone. Children and friends made it beautiful if poignant.

The first New Year’s Eve has flown on the wings of memories that are full of laughter and quiet aloneness but with comfort and feeling of still here. He remains a gift that keeps on giving despite the absence.

Anniversary number 54 was spent enjoying dinner and a theatre performance in the company of friends who are another type of family. The two ‘widows’ knew the muddle that resulted in the tickets for the performance and the anniversary date being the same was no mistake. In our hearts we knew the two friends who are no longer here made that choice for us. They decided this first, this gathering would be to celebrate, not mourn.

There are many more ‘firsts’ to come. Somehow I am able to think that those firsts will only become days to remember on the personal calendar. That personal calendar has many firsts from other losses and triumphs. I am so grateful that there are many more dates to celebrate than to mourn.

When we meet, let’s talk about the happy memories, the firsts which can be met with equanimity and remember that sometimes death can be a gift of love.

The Meander: Let’s greet each other with love and cheerfulness and for heaven’s sake don’t call me the widow Paula!