Saturday's Sayings
There is No Name...
The child that loses a parent is an orphan.
A man who loses his wife is a widower.
A woman who loses her husband is a widow.
There is no name for a parent that loses a child,
for there is no word to describe this pain.
~Author Unknown
*****
"We lose the person we were..."
Grief is a strange journey. Each time we embark upon it, it is as though we have never taken its roads before....For we do not only lose another person; we lose the person we were with the one we lost.
~Patricia Monaghan
*****
"I think of nothing but my grief..."
Alas! I am so unhappy
that I cannot speak my misery
except to say that it's hopeless:
despair is already at the door
to throw me to the bottom of the well
where it seems there is no escape.
My eyes are throwing out so many tears
that they don't see the earth or the sky,
there is such an abundance of weeping.
My mouth is lamenting everywhere,
from my heart nothing better comes out
than sighs with no relief.
Sadness with its great efforts
has made my body so weak
that it has no energy or power.
It is like one of the dead,
so that seeing it from the outside,
one loses all recognition.
I have nothing left but the sad voice
that I hear myself crying with,
lamenting the terrible absence.
Alas! I have lost the happy presence
of the one I lived for
and saw with such good heart!
I am sure that his spirit
reigns with his ruler Jesus Christ
contemplating the divine essence.
How much will his body be ordered
the promises of the Holy Writ
will make it live in heaven without doubt.
While he was healthy and strong,
faith was his comfort.
His God he possessed by belief.
In this lively faith he died,
which has brought him to the very sure port
where he has the knowledge of God.
But alas! my body is banished
from him with whom it was united
since the time of our childhood!
My hope also is punished,
when it finds itself stripped
of his, full of all knowledge.
Mind and body are full of mourning,
so much that they are changed to laments;
only weeping is my face.
I cry in the woods and in the plains,
to heaven and earth I complain,
I think of nothing but my grief.
Death, who has played me such an evil trick
to beat down my force and my tower,
all my refuge and my defense,
has not known how to ruin my love
which I feel growing night and day,
which my sorrow makes grow and advance.
My pain cannot be revealed
and it is so hard for me to swallow it
that I lose all patience about it.
I must not talk about it any more,
but think about going soon
to where God has put him through his mercy....
~Marguerite d'Angouleme
*****
"Grief fills the room up of my absent child..."
CARDINAL PANDULPH:
You hold too heinous a respect of grief.
CONSTANCE:
He talks to me that never had a son.
KING PHILIP:
You are as fond of grief as of your child.
CONSTANCE:
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form:
Then have I reason to be fond of grief?
Fare you well: had you such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort than you do...
O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrows' cure!
~Shakespeare
Posts
