I am pondering a few things here. What happens to all the pain we endure in the course of a life? Who can carry such heartache and sorrow. Not I. Recently I've been thinking back on where I was last fall. The "thinking back" is nowhere near as powerful as the experience I lived. I know, because I chronicled it via the "Deeper than Cancer" blog, and I have recently been re-reading day by day my October and November of a year ago. When I re-read those posts from last fall I am stunned. Though it refreshes my memory, it also seems as if that journey was another person's in another life. I can read it, and remember it; at the same time, I can no longer hold the emotional component of it. I distance myself... It was simply too much. Even the intensity of my connection/disconection wrestling match with God...too much for me right now to grasp. If you had a painful childhood, maybe you know what I mean. On one level you remember, but on another level...it is a bad dream and not a reality you lived.
Ah, but there was also healing in that blog, for me, and there was love and gratitude. So, yes, I guess we don't have to carry all that pain. There is healing of our physical and emotional wounds. Yet, isn't there always something that lingers... something that triggers those old feelings when we see the house we grew up in... when we clean out the closet and find that old reminder of our past? And when I read those posts, which for some reason I feel compelled to do, it is akin to seeing a house I grew up in... it is still very unsettling to me. I was writing out my experience in such an unedited and raw way, that it is an almost hyper-real reminder of pain and despair that remains... available online and continuously "present" and looking squarely at me...possibly for the rest of my days...(what happens to inactive blogs...do they stay online forever and ever?). And I think I will never be free of the need to go back and re-read it and remember... do we all need to re-live and re-examine our pain so much or is it just me? I suppose it is the curse of introspection.
So, here is an interesting poem...at least the first part of the poem speaks to me about what I am experiencing.
Naming the stars
Joyce Sutphen
This present tragedy will eventually
turn into myth, and in the mist
of that later telling the bell tolling
now will be a symbol, or, at least,
a sign of something long since lost.
This will be another one of those
loose changes, the rearrangement of
hearts, just parts of old lives
patched together, gathered into
a dim constellation, small consolation.
Look, we will say, you can almost see
the outline there: her fingertips
touching his, the faint fusion
of two bodies breaking into light.
What a beautiful poem! You always find the best one. What happens to all the pain, the grief, the sorrow? It gets different. It doesn't necessarily get better. The pain of losing someone is just as keen, but it becomes different...perhaps like a scab over a wound. If dug at, it could bleed afresh, but if left, then it's the reminder of that pain.
ReplyDeleteAnd you wouldn't be the same person without that experience. Perhaps its brought new insights to your work, it certainly has to your life, and to ours as well. All of that blog speaks volumes to what you went through, and that you came through to the other side. What inspiration for someone else going through something similar!
We all need to revisit our painful experiences, our losses. It reminds us of our humanity, of how lovely the world is right this minute, how precious every moment with our loved ones is.
Just my opinion...;-)