Wednesday's Woe - Spiral of Grief - Going Up or Down? ~Angie Prince with C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Wednesday's Woe

Spiral of Grief - Going Up or Down?

~by Angie Prince,

with C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Tonight all the hells of young grief have opened again; the mad words, the bitter resentment, the fluttering in the stomach, the nightmare unreality, the wallowed-in tears. For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say,

"I never realized my loss till this moment"?

The same leg is cut off time after time. The first plunge of the knife into the flesh is felt again and again.

~C. S. Lewis

*****

Yesterday, as Nathan came in from his new job, we began to talk. I was asking him what songs have ministered to him in his grief. (About that conversation, I will share more later.) He described some poignant moments he had had amidst some sweet music, sharing with me some of the heartfelt feelings he had had about Merry Katherine. Then he left the room.

Even though I had been grieving all day long (as I do everyday, tears coming here and there throughout each day), after my conversation with Nathan, somehow it hit me anew:

She is gone.... She is gone, and she's not coming back!

My heart was stabbed anew at such stark reality.

(How does this happen? I KNOW it's true: she died, and I have been grieving her now for 4 1/2 years, but then suddenly, I realize it anew in its bleak reality.)

Oh God, how do I live with this pain -- as bad as it is all the time -- and then it dive-bombs me with its abject starkness, again!

So, today I wrote this poem:

*****

Clouds of Gray, My Mainstay

It's become a novelty again ~

This realization that you're gone.

It wreaks its havoc once again:

Never... again... will you... come home...

The world outside is cloudy gray;

So too is the state of my heart...

The clouds outside may go away,

But never the ones in my heart.

And even though my heart e'er knows

You've gone away, n'er to return,

My mind plays tricks, forgets it knows,

Then recalls, sets my heart again t' churn...

(The mind cannot take such drastic loss ~

If so, how could it e'en function?

Continual recalls are my cross;

Grief becomes my divine unction.)

My baby girl, you've gone away,

In your place, only clouds of gray.

But soon one day, the Son will shine,

Give life t' this heart, now dead on th' vine...

Disperse Death's shadow, O Light Divine,

Join me anew to sweet baby o' mine!

Give us Your hope, with an eternal mind.

Pictures - thanks to FotoSearch.com

Poem - Clouds of Gray, My Mainstay - Angie Bennett Prince - 2/1/2011