When a person that you love so much, passes on from this earth, and you’re left behind. That’s the situation for me, Brendan’s family and friends.

I know that the normal way to express the loss of someone is to say they have "died". I've been saying it all along. But dying would also mean the complete annihilation of Brendan's soul; Brendan's spirit. And I believe Brendan continues to live, although in a different place other than planet Earth. So I'd rather say, "Brendan has gone on a journey ahead of us. We'll be joining him in the not too distant future."

When you are so very close & intimate with a person that leaves this world, when they have already become apart of you.....what then?

I'm constantly reflecting on the many times I would just gaze at B with so much love and admiration. I would think, “What a miracle this person is.”

Anyone who has really truly loved someone so deeply knows, that their love interest may not think of themselves as a miracle or anything special, but you see it. You see their essence and you are completely in love with their essence. That’s how I felt about B and still do. I can’t explain it; I’ve actually never been able to really capture the words to describe my love for Brendan. I keep looking for the right words to put in the right order. But I’m not successful. I know I’ve written so very much about my love for him; but it doesn’t seem to be the right set of words. Brendan was so much apart of me; and so many of us.

I loved him from the day I met him. I know that I am feeling utterly sorry for myself. Sorry for the loss of him in our lives. Sorrowful and empty without him here. He was a part of the puzzle that made me who I am right now. I’m a much better person after having him in my life. All his foibles fall away and I am left with nothing but the adorableness that was Brendan.

I only find this level of endearment and affectionate love in Hinduism and Radha’s love for the God Krishna. And Krishna’s love for Radha. I will try to find some examples and post them here. For now, I can only find poetry and tributes. So that is why I have posted so many samples of poetry. Pablo Neruda is the very best at putting my intimate feelings into perfect harmony and rhythm with the words and arrangement that he uses.

6 Months...on August 7th

I Carry Your Heart With Me

I Carry Your Heart With Me

By E. E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

How Do I Love Thee?

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Don't Go Far Off, Not Even For A Day

Don't Go Far Off, Not Even For A Day

By Pablo Neruda

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

Dirge Without Music

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Afternoon In February

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.

Through clouds like ashes
The red sun flashes
On village windows
That glimmer red.

The snow recommences;
The buried fences
Mark no longer
The road o'er the plain;

While through the meadows,
Like fearful shadows,
Slowly passes
A funeral train.

The bell is pealing,
And every feeling
Within me responds
To the dismal knell;

Shadows are trailing,
My heart is bewailing
And tolling within
Like a funeral bell.

Nobody Knows

Echo

By Christina Rossetti

Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low
As long ago, my love, how long ago

Nobody Knows

© Azumi Zaima

Published: May 2016

Nobody knows it's empty,
The smile that I wear.
The real one is left behind in the past
Because I left you there...

Nobody knows I am crying.
They won't even see my tears.
When they think I am laughing,
I wish you were here...

Nobody knows it's painful.
They think that I am strong.
They say it won't kill me,
But I wonder if they are wrong...

Nobody knows I miss you.
They think I am all set free,
But I feel like I am bound with chains,
Trapped in the mystery...

Nobody knows I need you.
They think I can do it on my own,
But they don't know I am crying
When I am all alone...

Animals Grieve Their Dead Too...

Knowing that other animal species suffer and have difficulty with grief is somehow comforting to me......I don't want them to suffer either.

Full story from National Geographic

This is a grieving dolphin, carrying her dead baby on her dorsal fin. Two other dolphins remain on either side of her as if to guard her, as if they are grieving with her.

Keeper of the Dreams

When a favorite person; a loved one~ dies
You get to be the keeper of their dreams
Not just one person,
But many friends can be in this role

To remember their dreams
keep the dreams,
live the dreams,
speak of the stories,
keep the dreams & stories alive
always;
Within us,
Through us.

The old paradigm of letting
the die go and moving on....
Is detramental in every way.
And it doesn't honor the loved one.
We are meant to keep our loved
ones alive.
Because they are alive.

Are we so small minded that
We believe they are only defined by skin & bones?
How limited that is, how uncreative of us all.
The ancient ones knew better...

Famous Authors on Death

“Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.” – Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist

“People living deeply have no fear of death.” – Anaïs Nin, The Diary Of Anaïs Nin, Volume Two

“Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain; a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats, humiliations, and despairs — the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity; but death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man’s best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth

“I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind — and that of the minds who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.” – William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

“Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.” – Helen Keller

“For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied.” – Susan Sontag

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so as long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.” – Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” – Ernest Hemingway

“People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.” – Marcel Proust

“No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.” – Plato

“The kindest and most meaningful thing anyone ever says to me is: your mother would be proud of you. Finding a way in my grief to become the woman who my mother raised me to be is the most important way I have honored my mother. It has been the greatest salve to my sorrow. The strange and painful truth is that I’m a better person because I lost my mom young. When you say you experience my writing as sacred what you are touching is the divine place within me that is my mother. Sugar is the temple I built in my obliterated place. I’d give it all back in a snap, but the fact is, my grief taught me things. It showed me shades and hues I couldn’t have otherwise seen. It required me to suffer. It compelled me to reach.” — Cheryl Strayed

“Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can’t be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?” – Aldous Huxley

“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?” – Voltaire, Candide

“Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing — a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.” – George Bernard Shaw

“Droll thing life is — that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself — that comes too late — a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be.” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long. This fact is the real root cause of all our anger and pain and despair. And you can either run from this fact or, by way of love, you can embrace it.” – Jonathan Franzen

“To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase ‘terrible beauty.’ Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it’s a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else’s body. It also makes me quite astonishingly calm at the thought of death: I know whom I would die to protect and I also understand that nobody but a lugubrious serf can possibly wish for a father who never goes away.” — Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir

I Find You Everywhere!

1875 Blue & Gold Yearbook. UC. Found in McHenry Library

Famous Authors on Death

William Faulkner

“I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.”

from the book: As I Lay Dying

Edgar Allan Poe

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?"

The Premature Burial

George Eliot

"Here was a man who now for the first time found himself looking into the eyes of death--who was passing through one of those rare moments of experience when we feel the truth of a commonplace, which is as different from what we call knowing it, as the vision of waters upon the earth is different from the delirious vision of the water which cannot be had to cool the burning tongue. When the commonplace 'We must all die' transforms itself suddenly into the acute consciousness 'I must die--and soon,' then death grapples us, and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first."

Middlemarch

George Orwell

"A normal human being does not want the Kingdom of Heaven: he wants life on earth to continue. This is not solely because he is "weak," "sinful" and anxious for a "good time." Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise. Ultimately it is the Christian attitude which is self-interested and hedonistic, since the aim is always to get away from the painful struggle of earthly life and find eternal peace in some kind of Heaven or Nirvana. The humanist attitude is that the struggle must continue and that death is the price of life."

Lewis Carroll

death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!"

Sylvie and Bruno

William Shakespeare

"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once."

Julius Caesar

Jack Kerouac on death....

Jack Kerouac on death.....

"I realized that I had died and been reborn numberless times but just didn't remember especially because the transitions from life to death and back to life are so ghostly easy, a magical action for naught, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times, the utter casualness and deep ignorance of it. I realized it was only because of the stability of the intrinsic Mind that these ripples of birth and death took place, like the action of the wind on a sheet of pure, serene, mirror-like water. I felt sweet, swinging bliss, like a big shot of heroin in the mainline vein; like a gulp of wine late in the afternoon and it makes you shudder; my feet tingled. I thought I was going to die the very next moment. But I didn't die...”
~from: 'On The Road'

“When I die, put near me something that has loved the light, and had the sky above it always.” Nell. From "The Old Curiousity Shop". Charles Dickens

The description of Nell at the moment of death "She seemed a creature fresh from the hand of God and waiting for the breath of life; not one who had lived and suffered death."

Mark Twain's Response Concerning the Death of His Daughter Suzy

It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live. There is but one reasonable explanation of it. The intellect is stunned by the shock and but gropingly gathers the meaning of the words. The power to realize their full import is mercifully lacking.

- Mark Twain's Autobiography (on daughter Suzy Clemen's death)

The Death of Jean by Mark Twain

The Death Of Jean

The death of Jean Clemens occurred early in the morning of December 24, 1909. Mr. Clemens was in great stress of mind when I first saw him, but a few hours later I found him writing steadily.

"I am setting it down," he said, "everything. It is a
relief to me to write it. It furnishes me an excuse for thinking." At intervals during that day and the next I looked in, and usually found him writing. Then on the evening of the 26th, when he knew that Jean had been laid to rest in Elmira, he came to my room with the manuscript in his hand.

"I have finished it," he said; "read it. I can form no
opinion of it myself. If you think it worthy, some day--at the
proper time--it can end my autobiography. It is the final
chapter."

Four months later--almost to the day--(April 21st) he was
with Jean.

Albert Bigelow Paine.
Stormfield, Christmas Eve, 11 A.M., 1909.

Read: 'The Death of Jean'
http://www.online-literature.com/twain/1316/

When You Died

The Setting of the Sun

Your Memory Is Made of Light

I Shall Go On Living

A Day Will Come

If I wake up crying...

No one else, Love

No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. Viktor E. Frankl

Music I heard with you was more than music....

"Bread and Music" by Conrad Aiken

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, belovèd,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,
—They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.

The "Brendan" Plant

The first thing I saw when I went into Trader Joe's Thursday, July 19th. I bumped into B's friend Sunny.
He saw the plant that morning when he arrived for his shift. We both agreed. This is definitely a Brendan plant!

I Dream of You Bathing In Stardust & Moonbeams

The Fox & The Little Prince

Taming the Fox; from the Little Prince

“Please-tame me!' said the fox.

'I want to, very much,' the little prince replied. 'But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.'

'One only understands the things that one tames,' said the fox. 'Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me.'

'What must I do, to tame you?' asked the little prince.

'You must be very patient,' replied the fox. 'First you will sit down at a little distance from me-like that-in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day...”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

I did not know....

“I did not know how to reach him, how to catch up with him... The land of tears is so mysterious.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“People where you live," the little prince said, "grow five thousand roses in one garden... yet they don't find what they're looking for...

They don't find it," I answered.

And yet what they're looking for could be found in a single rose, or a little water..."

Of course," I answered.

And the little prince added, "But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“You're beautiful, but you're empty...One couldn't die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she's the one I've watered. Since she's the one I put under glass, since she's the one I sheltered behind the screen. Since she's the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three butterflies). Since she's the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Brendan's Great Love For Dougie Rodrigues

Brendan talked endlessly about his buddy Dougie Rodrigues
A brilliant Chef. He so much looked forward to going back home
to see D. R and ask him to cook him up a meal.
So this post is in honor of Brendan
and Dougie's friendship.

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’, by John Donne

‘Therefore, although I must physically leave you,

our souls don’t feel there’s any distance between us:

it feels more like an expansion,

much as when gold is beaten out into thin sheets

so it covers a greater area.

Or it’s like a pair of compasses,

where you are the one in the center

and I the one which circles it:

you stay on the same spot,

yet you still move, since you revolve

as I move around the perimeter.

(What’s more, the compasses are two in that they’re a pair,

but they’re really one, since they comprise the same one instrument.)

So this is how you will be to me,

as I move away from you:

you will remain here but move aslant in line with the direction I travel.

You remaining here enables me to travel in a perfect circle,

ensuring that I’ll end up right back here where I departed from –

back with you.’

Explanation of the poem ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’, by John Donne

Jimmy Kent Tribute to Brendan

your one wild and precious life?

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the field,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

~ Mary Oliver (American poet, b. 1935), from “The Summer Day”

How Do You Help A Grieving Friend?

No One is Saying the Right Thing to Me Today

No one is saying the right thing to me today. All is cliche, western culture crap. The “positive movement” that has overtaken us. If one is feeling anything that is not positive or doesn’t make you feel good then you are misinterpreted as a downer, a victim. One who brings sadness & hardship on oneself. It gets tiresome. I touted that belief system the past few years as well, so I get it. I’ve always been afraid of my own despair, long before cancer last year, long before Brendan was killed.

Everyone seems so afraid of sad emotions, emotions of grief. The usual comment is, “Well this will probably make you stronger.” I wonder where that comment/idea came from? Is it some biblical reference? Although when reflecting, I would agree that so many of my hardships in life prepared me for the series of traumatic experiences this year. I’m not sure it makes much of a difference. Aside from the fact that I’m not completely paralyzed from grief as I had been in the past.

My responses to Stupid things people say when someone you love dies. I’ve just had too, too many in the past 2 days! By the way; these include comments from Doctors, nurses, coworkers, old friends, new friends, acquaintances. Here’s a list of my responses, now you guess what their comment was:

We didn’t break up dummy, he DIED.

Well maybe I don’t want to fall in love again.

If it makes you “stronger” than why is suicide one of the 10 leading causes of death in this country?

No I’m not suicidal.

Yes, I’m sure we should all be more careful when we cross the road.

I KNOW there are a lot of things to be grateful for in life. 

The Bright Side of Life? That was a Monty Python Song Right?

No need to practice your Bible verses on me. 

The comment from the doctor today was just not the right thing to say at all. I simply went in to have my wrist evaluated because I had injured it over a year ago. I hadn’t been able to keep all of my appointments so I simply informed them about the breast cancer & the radiation and infection. I simply informed them about Brendan so they didn’t think I was ignoring the need for follow up treatment. The doctor’s response in regard to Brendan’s accident was, “people don’t look out for cars, they just walk right out in front of them.” Well, yes, maybe so but that isn’t the right thing to say to someone who less than 6 months ago lost their sweetheart because a car struck him down. Beside my son, my favorite guy on earth was hit and died from his injuries! The doctor’s response is just SO wrong! It just isn’t the right thing to say.

I ran into an old friend of mine the other day. At some point she suggested that I’ll fall in love again….Bad timing. Maybe I don’t want to fall in love again! Or an email response in which the friend assumes that I’m making things worse on myself. That maybe I’m just being very negative. And the nurse today, “There’s always something to be grateful for.” All of these comments are true but it’s not the proper response.

What is the proper response. Here’s an idea.

“Im so sorry.” “Gosh it hurts my heart to hear this.” “Do you have support set up?” If you are a friend you could say, “I’d like to call you. Is there a certain time that works for you today or in the next couple of days, or the next week?” As a close friend if the person turns you down, give it a few days and call. If they aren’t in the mood wait a couple of days and call again. If not then, give it a week and call again. If this is your friend, a friend that you think is important to you, keep in touch routinely. Don’t wait for them to call you….they can’t. They don’t know how. They don’t want to bother you with their grief and pain. They fear rejection at the most vulnerable time in their life. Keep in touch, don’t ignore, don’t let too much time pass before you get in contact. If too much time goes by you will feel worse and worse about not calling them to check in. Yes, it will be awkward to call them after time has passed by but do it anyway. Wouldn’t you want someone to do it for you?

That same friend that you are supporting in their grief will be there for you when you need support. That’s the kind of friend you want. The kind of friend who has gone through hell and knows what suffering feels like. They’ll most likely know what to say and how to support you. So pick up the phone. Offer to bring them food, pay for a massage gift certificate (one that doesn’t expire too quickly) and mail it to them in a “thinking of you” card. No stupid Hallmark sayings either. Just a blank card on the inside except for a sentence or two.

Love & Death

Love and Death

They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it.

Death cannot kill what never dies.

Nor can spirits ever be divided, that love and live in the same divine principle, the root and record of their friendship.
If absence be not death, neither is theirs.
Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.
For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent.
In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure.
This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because they are immortal.

William Penn, from More Fruits of Solitude

Death is but a crossing...

Image may contain: outdoor, text and water

Poem: Death Is Nothing At All

DEATH IS NOTHING AT ALL

I have only slipped away into the next room

I am I and you are you

Whatever we were to each other

That we are still

Call me by my old familiar name

Speak to me in the easy way you always used

Put no difference into your tone

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow

Laugh as we always laughed

At the little jokes we always enjoyed together

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was

Let it be spoken without effort

Without the ghost of a shadow in it

Life means all that it ever meant

It is the same as it ever was

There is absolute unbroken continuity

What is death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind

Because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you for an interval

Somewhere very near

Just around the corner

All is well.

Nothing is past; nothing is lost

One brief moment and all will be as it was before

How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

~ Canon Henry Scott-Holland, 1847-1918,
Canon of St Paul's Cathedral

The Truest Thing About Brendan

E-mail Exchange between Brendan's Mum & Me:

For years I've felt that Brendan was on this earth for a purpose greater than being son, brother, friend, lover. There was a purpose far beyond my imagination and probably not fully known by him but a force that drove him to be the person he was. It linked both his outward personality, his interaction with the world and the way he connected with others, and his inner spirit that gave him such bad dreams. I felt when he was sleeping he was processing not just the battle within himself but carrying the problems of many others in his subconscious.

This all may seem quite pretentious and highfaluting, hey, what do I know. But that's just my sense of things.

Thank you for sending this my way Wendy. It helps a lot.

Love,

Wendy McMullen mcmullen@ucsc.edu

7:35 AM (5 hours ago)

to Corinne

I could also sense this about Brendan. I think the most helpful part of my personal grief over Brendan, is that I feel at least one person really understood the private workings of Brendan's inner life and accepted him completely. And that is you Corinne. (Luckily he knew that) I've said this all before in a myriad of ways.

I had truly followed my intuition when interacting & just "being" with Brendan. I guess you could say, I let my love and my own "inner compass" guide me with Brendan (or maybe it was the "mother ship" guiding me). Brendan was endlessly fascinating and captivating to me. I was thinking how many roles he played in my life. This has only really come to me after reading quotes by CS Lewis referring to his wife Joy Davidman. So I model some of the following descriptions after Lewis.

Since Brendan has left us in physical form I feel that he is bigger than ever in my life. We are coming up on the fourth month of his physical absence and I've had time to reflect on the emptiness I feel, and where that emptiness is for me. Or as CS Lewis says, "the amputation". However, for me the "amputation" is not in one place. It's in different parts of my life, my human cells, and my character. All have been disrupted.

Brendan was my co-pilot. my first mate, my friend, my lover, my kid brother, my troubled child. He expressed frustration and anger about the world so that I didn't have to. He showed me how to follow my true self (no matter how outrageous) and not apologize for it. (Aside from my children) He was the most beautiful being I've ever met in my life.

Everyone says the same about their fallen beloved so it sounds cliche. But for me it's the truest statement that I know for sure. Brendan was a magical being, he was one of kind. There was no one like him before he arrived and there will never be another like him on the planet again. I somehow have to find peace with that.

CS Lewis inspired and help put words to what role Brendan was in my life. This is his description of his relationship with Joy Davidman after she died.

She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always,

holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress; but at the same time all that any man friend (and I have good ones) has ever been to me. Perhaps more.

C. S. Lewis

Brendan: You Are In My Heart, In My Soul, In My Cells Now...

CHANGE OF ADDRESS

You didn't die
you just changed shape

became invisible
to the naked eye

became this grief

it's sharpness
more real

than your presence was

before you were separate to me
entire to yourself

now you are
a part of me

you are inside my self

I call you
by your new name

'Grief...Grief! '

although I still call you
'Love.'

~Dónall Dempsey

Grief

Understanding the Unexpected Aspects of Grief...

Women and Men Tend to Grieve Differently

It's Been 4 Months

Poems That Comfort Me In The Night

Love Sonnets

by Pablo Neruda

When I die, I want your hands on my eyes:

I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands

To pass their freshness over me once more:

I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.

I want your ears still to hear the wind,

 I want you to sniff the sea’s aroma that we loved together,

To continue to walk on the sand we walk on.

I want what I love to continue to live,

And you whom I love and sang above everything else

To continue to flourish, full-flowered;

So that you can reach everything my love directs you to,

So that my shadow can travel along in your hair,

So that everything can learn the reason for my song.

Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold, 
Her hardest hue to hold. 
Her early leaf’s a flower;  
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf. 
So Eden sank to grief, 
So dawn goes down to day. 
Nothing gold can stay.

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, 
And sorry I could not travel both 
And be one traveler, long I stood 
And looked down one as far as I could .
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
 Then took the other, as just as fair.  
And having perhaps the better claim, 
Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 
Though as for that, the passing there.  
Had worn them really about the same, 
And both that morning equally lay .
In leaves no step had trodden black .
Oh, I kept the first for another day! 
Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 
I doubted if I should ever come back. 
I shall be telling this with a sigh  
Somewhere ages and ages hence: 
Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I took the one less traveled by, 
And that has made all the difference.

Death is Nothing at All
by Canon Henry Scott-Holland
Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped away
into the next room.
I am I, and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
that we are still.
Call me by my old familiar name,
speak to me in the easy way which you
have always used to.
Put no difference in your tone,
wear no forced air of
solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at
the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Let my name be ever the household
word that it always was, let it be spoken
without effect, without a trace of shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was;
there is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you, for an interval somewhere very near,
just around the corner.
All is well. Nothing is past; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

Elegy for Your Absence
by H.R. Hays
In that moment you sailed for all of death,
Into profound oceans of silence
With long hours of sleeping pupils,
And a flock of doves caught in your dreams.
Now you are already in distant moonlight,
More yourself than in the arrows of your golden clock
Where you reckoned such a shoreless moment
For the thirst of wings that was burning on your shoulders.
You shall have vaulted seas stared at by inquietude,
Abysses in the timid solitude of your absence;
And in the night you shall have been delicate warm breeze
Close to that crumb of our amorous earth.
Long embrace of breath over the poppies
And a laugh and a song without words or music;
With a “Here I am,” glad of past wakefulness,
And a “forever” warm in the cool plain.
As you leave pressed in the arms of silence
The light of our words shall echo more clearly
And in each stanza of air an accent shall be entangled
And in each butterfly more wings shall be born to you.
Gladness of being alive for that eternal day,
Knowing yourself in the water, in the sun, and in the grass.
Among the clouds you shall make nativities of silver
And you shall discover your nest in a tree of stars.

Brendan's Glasses Were So Much Apart of His Identity to Me.....

I've suddenly become hooked on Gaelic Lament Songs or (keening). My grief therapist mentioned keening to me during my second appointment with her. I finally remembered to look it up on YouTube the other night. I have to say that these lament songs are even more powerful than the Buddhist & Hindu Mantras and Prayers I've been using in rituals for Brendan.

Here is a link to a 6 minute YouTube video explaining keening.

If you're prepared to cry, here are a few songs that have been the most cathartic balm for my aching heart. The music draws the sadness and pain out, through the intense melodic mixture of high and low notes. It's the most amazing expression of therapeutic grief that I've ever experienced. It hurts to listen yet it also helps. These songs speak so deeply of my pain. The cells of my body resonate to the melodies. (Must be my Great-grandmother from Ireland coming through).

Song of Keening by Aine Minogue

Mo Ghille Mear (My Gallant Hero) I'll list the lyrics at the bottom of the page. Both incredibly heartwarming and heartbreaking.

Caoineadh Cu Chulainn (Lament for My Son)
Lyrics:
Aye laddie are ya goin now?
Are ye goin' now?
Will you stay awhile?
Kin of my faint & flickering heart,
And spend a moment with me.

Yes, I know.
Time has been clipped
and you are set free.
But for just a moment
Would you sing of
Caoineadh Cu Chulainn

Sing like Davey.
Capture my longing
and know that I too
wish to return to my home

The water flowing here
will carry you back to
the home you left by the sea.
And there you will wake
in the long morning and
come to know.

Oh laddie,
Are you goin' just now.
Can't you stay awhile longer?
Sit and we will share the last
golden drop of the wee
dram that is you and me.

Mo Ghille Mear (My Gallant Hero)

Lá na mara
Lá na mara nó rabharta
Guth na dtonnta a leanadh
Guth na dtonnta a leanfad ó
Lá na mara nó lom trá
Lá na mara nó rabharta
Lá an ghainimh, lom trá
Lá an ghainimh

(The day of the sea
The day of the sea or of the high tides
To follow the voice of the waves
I would follow the voice of the waves
The day of the sea or the ebb tide
The day of the sea or of the high tides
The day of the sands, the ebb tide
The day of the sands)

Can you feel the river run?
Waves are dancing to the sun
Take the tide and face the sea
And find a way to follow me

Leave the field and leave the fire
And find the flame of your desire
Set your heart on this far shore
And sing your dream to me once more