Several weeks ago—in a different lifetime for me—I wrote about the stunning piece of performance art involving my fellow residents and the staff at Mt. San Antonio Gardens. Elizabeth Turk’s “Look Up” project, with hundreds of brightly colored umbrellas, became an anthem at Claremont Presbyterian last Sunday.
“What do you tell yourself when you face adversity?” Turk asked, and in November I wrote that I saw my neighbors as people who had experienced great love and great loss. They were resilient.
Now, it is my turn. After the loss of the love of my life on November 27, I have descended into unspeakable grief. My friend and meditation partner, Duane Bidwell, has declared me a high functioning mourner. I was able to put together a memorial service, deal with the formalities—and there are many—return comfort to our children as they comforted me, and be somewhat gracious to those who reached out to me.
But functioning on that level only shoves grief aside; it doesn’t extinguish it. Friends have given me books on grieving that are supposed to help. I will get to them in good time; right now I am for the most part consumed with doing the daily “to dos" and retreating to sobs when I must.
During this time, which I understand to be only the initial phase of dealing with sorrow, I have found three refuges.
One, of course, is friendship. Many have reached out; some have been profoundly helpful. Friends of long standing know me well enough to tell truths, and new friends with the skill for saying the right thing at the right time are helping me carry the load.
The second is poetry. I lived my life in prose, and poetry has been an infrequent companion, but it has become important of late. My journalist friend Bill Brown wrote recently, "I have found in journalism we sometimes told facts without telling truth while in poetry we tell truth without facts.”
So, when Frank Rogers sent me a copy of Jan Richardson’s The Cure for Sorrow: A book of blessings for times of grief, I hoped to find a little truth between the covers. I did. Richardson, a Methodist minister, wrote after the death of her husband, and both in and between the lines of her verse, I can follow her grief as I try to process my own.
Her poem, “Where Your Song Begins Again,” written for her husband’s memorial service, gave me the courage to write a poem for Leanne’s, which is appended to this post.
And finally, meditation: doing more of what we do together on Friday mornings. Nights are the worst, most lonely, time. And I find myself, just before bed, illuminating a dark room with candles and resting in Centering Prayer before resting my head on the pillow. This silence, more than spoken prayer, brings me comfort.
For Leanne: A Lovesong
Several people have asked me for a copy of this poem that I wrote for and read at Leanne Bauman Kerchner’s memorial service.
My heart cries for your soul to bandage it.
So that someday it can fill again.
But my heart still rejoices at the lives we had.
We were just kids when we married.
How did we know that we picked right,
that we would grow together?
I don’t remember it being hard.
Hard times, yes, some.
But hard on each other, not much.
As you died, my first thought was of gratitude.
I closed my eyes as loopy images flooded my brain,
of the toddler kids climbing in our bed,
of you working all day and writing your dissertation at night,
of us escaping the kids to find clandestine places in the house to be friendly.
Who gets six decades of that kind of friendship?
Even in our last week before the stroke took you,
we could sit for an hour-and-a-half talking at dinner.
With a bottle of wine.
Who gets the web of friendship
you cemented,
with your listening ear, your ready smile and laugh?
The Usual Suspects,
The Chicago Christmas Gang,
The Oregon Family Beach Walkers,
the Best Block in Claremont neighbors,
a Congregation of the faithful and the seekers.
And Crossroads, a reading group that blossomed into
a fellowship that has lasted for more than four decades.
You bound us to all of them.
Who gets children like Paige and Charles?
Hand picked. Hand raised, mostly by you.
And now they have come to celebrate and honor you by comforting me.
So, take a swath of bandage, dear.
Wrap it around my heart.
Let it keep me warm on the dark nights,
and the cold winter ahead.
They tell me spring is on the way.
Love you always.
Chuck