the sacredness of tears...the hope of words

the heaviness of grief...the gift of love

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, a deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.” ~Washington Irving

The grief is thick, difficult to see through the fog. My heart is heavy. I’ve used that cliche before, but now I feel its actual physical presence, this heavy heart.

Two weeks ago my oldest son and his wife lost their son four months before he was supposed to enter this world. He came too early, this tiny boy. And now his parents walk in deep sorrow. Their pain. Their grief. Their loss.

When I talk to my son I can actually feel his grief over the miles. It is palpable. It tastes like rusted metal and sounds like a screamed echo as he whispers, “I don’t know what to do.” I say, “Breathe,” even though I am unsure of everything.

I pore over Anne Lamott, Mary Oliver, Kate Bowler, hoping their words will raise me out of quicksand and teach me how to offer a hand for my boy and his girl to grab. A writer, a poet, and a religious scholar all walked through their personal sorrows, yet still wrote about life’s bits of joy.

In Stitches, Lamott writes, “This is who I want to be in the world. This is who I think we are supposed to be, people who help call forth human beings from deep inside hopelessness.”

Oliver penned in “Wild Geese,” “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.”

In Good Enough, Bowler states, “When you cannot have the future you imagine, let the tears flow. Let yourself mourn. Pour out your grief in all its truth, with all your power, in whatever form comes. With words or songs or talking with friends. Long walks or screaming into the void. Let it out.”

In Thorton Wilder’s Act III of Our Town, Mrs. Soames said, “My, wasn’t life awful…and wonderful?” Our lives are constant oxymorons. People die. Flowers bloom. We tell funny stories at funerals. Wildfires burn entire towns, yet people rebuild. Pets are rescued. A childhood friend loses her brother. Heartfelt anecdotes about him are shared among friends and family. A madman invades a country, but strollers are left at train stations so evacuating mothers can use them when they arrive. Despair. Faith. Storms. Rainbows. Anguish. Hope. When I taught Romeo and Juliet, I loved reading Romeo’s word out loud to my students, but now his oxymorons have taken up residence in my heart. “O brawling love, O loving hate…O heavy lightness…misshapen chaos..feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health.”

When we open our hearts, we acknowledge they will be broken. Beloved pets die. Grandmothers lose their memories. Marriages end. Yet we still comb the knots from the old cat’s fur, visit Nana even though she can’t remember our names, and find new love among the ashes. Hope lives in company with grief. Even as we shatter, we see glimmers through the cracks, because as Leonard Cohen wrote, “That’s how the light gets in.”

And for now…there is solace in words and music and the presence of friends. We mourn. We sing. We reach out. We accept help. We ache. We love.

“Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it want to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love.” ~Elizabeth Gilbert

“That is one good thing about this world…there are always sure to be more springs.” ~Lucy Maude Montgomery