A Not-So Final Word
The Window by Rumi
Your body is away from me
but there is a window open
from my heart to yours.
From this window, like the moon
I keep sending news secretly.
If you’ve arrived at this place along the Widows’ Walk, you’ve been on a journey for a while (unless you like to read the last few pages of a book the way I do sometimes!) And while this may be the last piece I write for a while, it’s definitely not the ending. There is no ‘finish line’ to loss at which you arrive and find your grief resolved and neatly tied up with a bow. Grief is, as the saying goes, ‘the gift that keeps on giving’ and while you may have come a long way since those earliest, painful days, we never really leave grief behind. We carry it with us as we go forward into life, forever changed by our loss while also incredibly blessed to have been loved in the first place.
So even as I conclude this website, my hope is that you will reach out to each other, to me and to the wider world of your fellow human beings touched by bereavement and continue to share, support and learn from one another in this essential human experience. There is not a person alive who has not or will not know grief and loss (and if there is, that’s an even more profound pain of never having loved enough to grieve.)
It’s amazing to me in our modern world that we lack such understanding of how to walk through this life with the awareness of our mortality. No-one speaks, no-one tells, no-one acknowledges that this experience awaits us all. It’s as if those who grieve pass through a door into a silent room that makes us invisible to those on the outside. Yet it in the room is every human being who ever lived and loved and all those still to come! It’s my hope that The Widows’ Walk, in even a small way, has made you feel less alone and helped you realize that if grief is the price of love, in the end it’s a price absolutely worth paying.
Hard Things and Hopeful Things
I can only leave you with the truth as I know it; some things about grief will always be hard, but there is still hope to be found amidst even the most painful of losses.
- You will always miss them and feel their absence
- You’ll always wish they were still here
- Days and years to come will be bittersweet as you live the life that they are missing
- You will be forever changed by loss; you will not be the same
And yet –
- It won’t always hurt this much, although it may at times and will always be tender
- You’ll learn to make peace with the hurt and still go on living
- You will heal and slowly find your way back to life and love again
- Your gratitude that they lived will outlive your grief that they died
- Their presence will never leave you but will find you and comfort you
- Love is forever. You will always love them and they will always love you
We do not understand all the Mysteries of life and death. Human beings have always tried to see through to the other side but that’s a journey from which we cannot return. If you allow me a moment of indulgence based on my own beliefs and experience as a minister for more than 25 years, this is what I’ve seen and what I believe.
Those who love us do not leave us. Yes, at the beginning when we lose them all we see and feel is the hole blown in our lives, and for a while that’s all we know. Yet over time, if we open our eyes to see into the spiritual heart of life, we begin to realize that they have not gone anywhere. They are near us, as close as breath, surrounding us, reaching out to us, comforting and supporting us if we only have the ability to perceive. Ask yourself, where would you be but beside those you have loved more than life itself?
Whatever your faith or beliefs, all religions as well as science tell us there is more to this world than meets the eye. Energy is not created or destroyed, only transformed and we share our molecules with the stars. We who love know we are more than our bodies – we are spirit, consciousness, soul, heart, emotions, eternal love and each of us holds a spark of the divine.
I believe that when our time comes, in a way we cannot yet see, the veil between us will lift, those we love will come for us and we will all be together again. Between now and then, our task is to live the incredible love they gave us into life in a way that makes both them and us proud.
Endless blessings and love to you on your journey. As always, the poets say it best, so I leave you with the words of the Irish poet John O’Donohue:
Though we need to weep your loss,
You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,
Where no storm or night or pain can reach you.
Your love was like the dawn
Brightening over our lives
Awakening beneath the dark
A further adventure of colour.
The sound of your voice
Found for us
A new music
That brightened everything.
Whatever you enfolded in your gaze
Quickened in the joy of its being;
You placed smiles like flowers
On the altar of the heart.
Your mind always sparkled
With wonder at things.
Though your days here were brief,
Your spirit was live, awake, complete.
We look towards each other no longer
From the old distance of our names;
Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,
As close to us as we are to ourselves.
Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,
We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face,
Smiling back at us from within everything
To which we bring our best refinement.
Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.
When orchids brighten the earth,
Darkest winter has turned to spring;
May this dark grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.
May you continue to inspire us:
To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.
On the Death of the Beloved by John O’Donohue
The final picture is taken from a ritual I observe at the end of every summer. Some of Peter’s ashes are in the many rivers he fished, including the river where we built our cottage together. On the last day of the summer, I take a midnight swim with him and a floating candle to represent his spirit. The warm water and the cool air, the deepening indigo of the night sky and the shimmering candle in the moonlight are my companions as I remember and give thanks for Love and Life. He is always with me.