Edna St. Vincent Millay Got Grief...
"Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell."
It has been 19 months and that feeling creeps in ... you should be over it ... move on ... and I see it and say ... but how deeply did we love. October 16th is our wedding anniversary. A marriage far from perfect, filled with a host of challenges and heartaches. But in the face of it all, October had always been our month to enjoy; the changing season, the beauty of Colorado in the fall, walking for coffee in the crisp morning air, the striking color of the leaves, sometimes even venturing up the canyon for a last fishing weekend with our fingerless gloves. This year would be 35 years. Roy always bought me flowers, often a rose for each year we were married. Sometimes I think the idea of purchasing three dozen roses was just too much for him. A little grief humor.
And I hear these words from a character in the new TV series, This is Us: "If you don't address your grief, it's like a big deep breath that you never exhale."
For those of you who are not "over it" yet, who have not "moved on" ... I see you. I am with you.
Dirge Without Music
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.
EdnaSt. Vincent Millay, “Dirge Without Music” from Collected Poems © 1928, 1955 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis.