You're Still Here

[David Baxter PhD]

You're Still Here

At the finest level of my being,
You're still with me.
We still look at each other,
At that level beyond sight.
We talk and laugh with each other,
In a place beyond words.
We still touch each other,
On a level beyond touch.
We share time together in a place,
Where time stands still.
We are still together,
On a level called love.
But I cry alone for you,
In a place called reality.

By Richard Lepinsky
from: Chicken Soup for the Grieving Soul

 

[Cat Dancer]

Like a child in its cradle
I would that very gentle arms
Might rock my grieving spirit
And be as it were a kindly shelter
For my heart - a traveler lost
On a remote deserted road.

-Nguyen Vy


Clean is the autumn wind,
Splendid the autumn moon,
The blown leaves are heaped and scattered,
The ice-cold raven starts from its roost.
Dreaming of you - when shall I see you again?
On this night sorrow fills my
heart.

~Li Po (701-762)

 

[ThatLady]

Poetry has always been able to move me to tears, moreso than any other medium of expression with the possible exception of music. Thanks for posting these beautiful poems. They give us insight, and the realization that others feel as we often feel, even those with the remarkable gift of putting those feelings into words that rock the soul.

 

[Cat Dancer]

Let your tears come. Let them water your soul.
~Eileen Mayhew

It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.
~Colette

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.
~William Shakespeare

There are things that we don't want to happen but have to accept, things we don't want to know but have to learn, and people we can't live without but have to let go.
~Author Unknown

As long as I can I will look at this world for both of us. As long as I can I will laugh with the birds, I will sing with the flowers, I will pray to the stars, for both of us.
~Sascha

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break. ~ William Shakespeare

This quote is on my PsychLinks Grief Resources page -- the first time I saw this was in a newsletter from Bereaved Families of Ontario.

 

[Cat Dancer]

Oh, cool. I didn't see that. Great minds think alike? LOL.

It's a wonderful quote. I have a very, very hard time speaking of grief and, well, basically anything outloud. But I think it's quite important to do so. To not be so alone with it.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

I learned that lesson personally years ago. When my mother died, I had just moved to a new city, started a new job 3 days previously, purchased a new house, and my wife was about to give birth to our second child and was having complications.

I wasn't even able to attend the funeral (she died in England and I was in Canada).

Everyone needed me to support them -- I just stuffed it all away and figured I was managing it until about 7 years later when my life circumstances had changed -- then it hit me full blast like her death had been yesterday.

Grief doesn't go away... it just waits until you are ready to grieve.

 

[Cat Dancer]

Wave of sorrow,
Do not drown me now:
I see the island
Still ahead somehow.

I see the island
And its sands are fair:
Wave of sorrow,
Take me there.

-Langston Hughes

 

[Into The Light]

the poem at the top of this thread is very moving.

also this quote here struck me.

There are things that we don't want to happen but have to accept, things we don't want to know but have to learn, and people we can't live without but have to let go.

thanks for posting them.