Telling the Truth

connecting the dots of my life

Tag: Grief and Loss

August 18, 2022

Will there really be a “Morning”?

This child-like poem from Emily Dickinson still speaks to me. Especially now, five years after I first published it. Imagine you’re a child again, wondering about what comes after this life. Or even what’s already here in this life–given Emily’s historical setting and your own. My response follows Emily’s poem.

Will there really be a “Morning”?
Is there such a thing as “Day”?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?

Has it feet like Water lilies?
Has it feathers like a Bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?

Oh some Scholar! Oh some Sailor!
Oh some Wise Man from the skies!
Please to tell a little Pilgrim
Where the place called “Morning” lies!

c. 1859

Emily Dickinson Poems, Edited by Brenda Hillman
Shambhala Pocket Classics, Shambhala 1995

Dear Emily,
I wonder what was on your mind when you wrote this. Maybe the War between the States? Family members who fought in it? Or how about the devastation left behind when so many cities and fertile fields were laid waste via fire?

Some people don’t think things here are that bad now; others don’t agree. I’d say we at least have something like it.

Then again, maybe you were thinking of less visible things. Perhaps a personal loss you couldn’t show the world. Or the piled up anguish of watching one family member after another decline in health and leave this world. Or your keen awareness that this world doesn’t always value what you value, or see things the way you do.

I think we have all of that right now, and more just keeps coming. I also think we’re getting tired of it.

Maybe you were lonely when you wrote this. So lonely that you would have been happy to leave this life behind. You might have been lonely for the birds and insects, trees and shrubs, water lilies and butterflies, sunrises and sunsets. All creatures great and small. Your outdoor cathedral and congregation where you felt safe, understood and appreciated. Without having to explain yourself over and over.

In your poem you call yourself a little Pilgrim. I like that. It’s a very kind and tender way to talk about yourself. Almost, but not quite putting yourself down because you don’t happen to be a scholar, sailor or wise man from the skies. I think you’re already a wise woman, a sailor of sometimes treacherous social seas, and a deep scholar of human life.

Now that you’re There, I wonder whether, as a Wise Woman from the skies, you might tell me where the place called “Morning” lies. Could you? Would you? It seems we have many lost souls here who are looking for that place. If not here, then where? Can you help us find it? Or at least send us a little poem about it?

Your pen pal, Elouise ♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 27 July 2017, reposted 18 August 2022
Photo found at collegewritingpoetry.wordpress.com

5 Comments
August 3, 2021

I’ve told you so much already, revisited

This post from December 2017 popped up yesterday. It’s as true today as it was back then. Not just about me, but about citizens, immigrants and strangers of all ages who know what it’s like to be on the other end of abusive sexual behavior.

I’ve told you so much already
And still it isn’t enough
To assuage the pain
Or grieve the sister and brother-losses
Of this cruel world

When did it begin and where
Will it end?

We haven’t even begun
You and I
To face the depths and height and reach
Of just one sorrow multiplied
Into a thousand permutations
Now dismissed as though
None of it meant a thing

I don’t have to dig up
The bones
Or display the misshapen ligaments
Of my body-soul
They’re on display daily
Don’t you see them?

Or are you lost
In your denial-desire for just
One more touch
One more self-righteous smirk
One more body-soul
To humiliate and throw
On the trash heap
Of been there done that

I don’t even know where
To begin
Or where this will end
It doesn’t feel safe
Or bode well
Given the contours
Of confessional history
That by sleight of hand
Turn the aggrieved
Into the aggressor
Dangerous and deceptive
Not to be believed
Just in it for publicity
Or attention or some other
Self-serving dream

We know not what we do
Was never so true
As it is today and tomorrow

I’ve told you so much already
And still it isn’t enough…..

My dear Friends,
This is where I’ve been in the last weeks and months. Fiercely angry about the cost being exacted from victims of sexual violence. Especially those who dare name it and describe it as experienced by them, and as it has played out for them over the years.

We must invite–not simply ‘allow’–victims’ personal and collective grief, shame, horror and anger to be heard. And felt. As often as necessary, before it’s too late. Our personal and collective humanity is at stake.

As for me, it’s time to step up and speak out yet again. This time not on my behalf, but standing with sisters and brothers I don’t know, may never meet, may not like personally, but identify with to such a degree that remaining silent or ‘moving on’ is not an option.

What does this look like for my blogging? The poem above is one example, though I know I can’t survive living in this hellish place every day. So I’m thinking about the coming year, and how I might begin taking apart pieces I can manage. From time to time. Nothing scholarly or scientific. Just the ravings of an articulate, educated woman fed up with the self-serving nonsense spewed out by those who want this to go away so we can get back to business as usual.

Thank you for visiting, reading, and listening with all your heart.
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 26 December 2017, reposted 3 August 2021
Image found at stock.adobe.com

2 Comments
March 3, 2021

What we don’t have

In the opening pages of his Journal of an Ordinary Grief, Mahmoud Darwish writes these haunting words:

What are you doing, father?

I’m searching for my heart, which fell away that night.

Do you think you’ll find it here?

Where else am I going to find it? I bend to the ground and pick it up piece by piece just as the women of the fellahin pick up olives in October, one olive at a time.

But you’re picking up pebbles!

Doing that is a good exercise for memory and perception. Who knows? Maybe these pebbles are petrified pieces of my heart. And even if they’re not, I would still have gotten used to the effort of searching on my own for something that made me feel lost when it was lost. The mere act of searching is proof that I refuse to get lost in my loss. The other side of this effort is the proof that I am in fact lost as long as I have not found what I have lost.

Mahmoud Darwish, Journal of an Ordinary Grief, pp 3-4. Translated from Arabic, with a foreword by Ibrahim Muhawi. Archipelago Books, English translation published in 2010; first published in Beirut in 1973.

When I read these words I can’t help thinking about our national crisis. Not Covid-19, or even political wars waging night and day in cities and towns everywhere.

Our most pressing crisis is our identity. Who are we as a nation?

Mahmoud Darwish’s father struggles with an “ordinary grief.” Ordinary because the grief never goes away. It’s the grief of a Palestinian whose heart has been broken. The grief of an old man without a country. Grief that won’t let go of memories because they’re the last link to what once home. The place where hearts were nourished and cherished. Memories now represented by pebbles. Bits and pieces of stone standing in for what was lost.

The USA is no paradise. Those brought here or captured against their have already attested to this.

They and their descendants are still looking for something. Dare we join them in their search? Stone by stone, bullet by bullet, bone by bone. Small connections to the past, and reminders of what they and we still don’t have: liberty and justice for all.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 3 March 2021
Painting of old man found at lettalkknowledge.wordpress.com

4 Comments
December 10, 2020

The Life we have is very great – revisited

Here’s a second look at Emily Dickinson’s poem about Life, Infinity, and the Human Heart. A good poem for today when we’re missing family members or friends for any reason, plus Covid-19, political standoffs, hate crimes, or the harsh reality of wildfires, avalanches and hurricanes. My lightly edited comments follow.

The Life we have is very great.
The Life that we shall see
Surpasses it, we know, because
It is Infinity.
But when all Space has been beheld
And all Dominion shown
The smallest Human Heart’s extent
Reduces it to none.

c. 1870

Emily Dickinson Poems, Edited by Brenda Hillman
 Shambhala Pocket Classics, Shambhala 1995

It doesn’t matter how many worlds we discover beyond this world. It doesn’t matter how far the distance is from here to there and beyond. It doesn’t even matter that the universe is still expanding.

None of this, as surpassingly great or expansive as it may be, holds a candle to the smallest of human hearts.

According to Emily, the Life we now have is ‘very great.’ The Life we’ll have beyond this Life is even greater. Yet it’s infinitesimal compared to what our hearts can see and grasp right now.

Emily describes the heart’s capacity to love Life. Especially when we can’t see those we love. She suggests that the expansiveness of one small human heart outshines infinity itself.

Yes, it’s fascinating to explore the universe, what may lie beyond it and how it’s ordered. Yet what we discover externally will never match the capacity of one small human heart to connect with another human heart.

It doesn’t matter whether that heart is what we call dead or alive, here or there, or somewhere in between. Nor do we need to understand exactly what Space encompasses, how it is governed, or where Infinity resides.

This isn’t about measuring or mapping Life beyond our present Life. Or discovering where those we love now reside.

It’s about connections. All it takes is one small human heart to leap beyond unmapped, immeasurable boundaries, expanding outward in a heartbeat to enfold the hearts of those we love. No matter where they or we may be.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 28 May 2017, lightly edited and reposted 10 December 2020
Image taken from Hubble Spacecraft, found at nasa.gov

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July 27, 2020

From This River, When I Was a Child | Mary Oliver

Photo of the dock and river; taken by DAFraser in July 2010

A Mary Oliver poem for all of us. My comments follow.

From This River, When I Was a Child, I Used to Drink

But when I came back I found

that the body of the river was dying.

“Did it speak?”

Yes, it sang out the old songs, but faintly.

“What will you do?”

I will grieve of course, but that’s nothing.

“What, precisely, will you grieve for?”

For the river. For myself, my lost
joyfulness. For the children who will not
know what a river can be—a friend, a
companion, a hint of heaven.

“Isn’t this somewhat overplayed?”

I said: it can be a friend. A companion. A
hint of heaven.

© 2008 Mary Oliver
Poem found in Red Bird, p. 44
Published by Beacon Press

When I read this poem, I tear up. It takes me back to my childhood in the South. We lived on a branch of the Savannah River. Our smaller yet substantial river was named the Vernon River, part of the Intracoastal Waterway.

Vernon River spoke to me multiple times. Especially when I was feeling sad, misunderstood or inundated by the noise of four daughters living in one house with two parents. Plus small pets, parakeets, and the occasional baby flying squirrels rescued from certain death when they fell or were pushed out of their nests.

We lived in rural Chatham County, at the end of a narrow country road, 15 miles from Savannah, Georgia. I had three younger sisters. Frequently I needed a companion. A hint of heaven that was there for me, night and day.

The Vernon River did all that for me. No, I didn’t drink the salt water. But I swam in it. Better than a bath on a hot, humid day! Plus miraculous skin-healing properties of salt water free for the taking. Crabs to be caught, boiled, picked and eaten. Salt-water breezes to soothe my sad, sometimes lonely soul. The soft splash of tides coming and going like clockwork. The sound of seagulls chasing shrimp boats early in the morning and late in the afternoon.

When I read Mary’s poem, I’m out on the dock again. Alone. Sitting on top of the picnic table. Feeling the goodness of earth and heaven come together in one grand moment of peace.

Am I “somewhat” overplaying what I’ve lost? Or what the children of today may never experience?

I said: it can be a friend. A companion. A
hint of heaven.

Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 27 July 2020
Photo of dock and river taken by DAFraser, July 2010

12 Comments
Video | April 27, 2020

Beautiful Music Monday

Conductor Emeritus Kenneth Jennings (1925-2015) leads over 900 choir alumni during the 100th Anniversary Celebration of the St. Olaf Choir in June of 2011.

Most of you probably know this hymn as “Fairest Lord Jesus.” It was my father’s favorite hymn, known to him by its older name, “Beautiful Savior.”

When I’m dying, I want music to carry me away. Then I want to join the choir. I want to sing music like this. Music that makes all things and all voices beautiful. I want tears to flow. Mine. The way they did this morning when I listened to this on You Tube.

I don’t understand why hymns like this reach so deeply into me. But there it is. And here we are today, surrounded by deaths of many kinds. Bodily and spiritual death. Death of hope and trust. Never easy, especially when it seems to be piling on without mercy.

I hope you enjoy listening to this amazing choir following the lead of their beloved conductor Emeritus, Kenneth Jennings. Like angels, they’re singing together on key, accompanied only by each other, following their leader. A force together that they could never be on their own.

Here are the lyrics as sung by the choir, following their opening wordless rendition of the tune.

Fair are the meadows, Fairer the woodlands,
Robed in flow’rs of blooming spring;
Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer;
He makes our sorr’wing spirit sing.

Beautiful Savior, Lord of the nations,
Son of God and Son of Man!
Glory and honor, Praise, adoration,
Now and forevermore be Thine!

I pray you’ll find beauty and music in the week ahead.
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 27 April 2020
St. Olaf Choir Alumni’s rendition of Beautiful Savior found at YouTube.com

2 Comments
December 30, 2017

without fanfare

without fanfare
snow blankets a multitude
of the fallen

A silent mercy falling from heaven. It asks no questions, requires no filled-in forms, no fees to pay or bribes expected. Just a quiet laying to rest of the fallen.

This morning I woke up to the beginning of a short, ice-cold soft snowfall. Our worlds carry so much grief on the surface and beneath the ground. Public and private. Self-inflicted and other-inflicted. The names of fallen ‘great’ men and ‘great’ women tick past our eyes in tribute to those we’ve lost.

Yet the greatest losses are small, personal, unrecorded and unacknowledged. I imagine a gentle snowfall blanketing your sorrow and mine. Letting our losses be just as they are. Invisible and not forgotten. Blanketing the overflowing wisdom and sorrow of little children, women and men everywhere.

This isn’t about romanticized loss. It’s about acknowledging the staggering number of irreplaceable lives and dreams now laid to rest in their particular beauty, agony and grandeur. Just a little lower than the angels. Each and every one.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 30 December 2017
Photo taken by me with my iPad, from our bedroom window 30 December 2017

6 Comments
July 27, 2017

Will there really be a “Morning”?

Here’s an Emily Dickinson poem that appeals to the child in each of us. I also find it timely, all things considered. My response follows her poem.

Will there really be a “Morning”?
Is there such a thing as “Day”?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?

Has it feet like Water lilies?
Has it feathers like a Bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?

Oh some Scholar! Oh some Sailor!
Oh some Wise Man from the skies!
Please to tell a little Pilgrim
Where the place called “Morning” lies!

c. 1859

Emily Dickinson Poems, Edited by Brenda Hillman
Shambhala Pocket Classics, Shambhala 1995

Dear Emily,
I wonder what was on your mind when you wrote this. Maybe the War between the States? Family members who fought in it? Or how about the devastation left behind when so many cities and fertile fields were laid waste via fire?

Some people don’t think things here are that bad now; others don’t agree. I’d say we at least have something like it.

Then again, maybe you were thinking of less visible things. Perhaps a personal loss you couldn’t show the world. Or the piled up anguish of watching one family member after another decline in health and leave this world. Or your keen awareness that this world doesn’t always value what you value, or see things the way you do.

I think we have all of that right now, and more just keeps coming. I also think we’re getting tired of it.

Maybe you were lonely when you wrote this. So lonely that you would have been happy to leave this life behind. You might have been lonely for the birds and insects, trees and shrubs, water lilies and butterflies, sunrises and sunsets. All creatures great and small. Your outdoor cathedral and congregation where you felt safe, understood and appreciated. Without having to explain yourself over and over.

In your poem you call yourself a little Pilgrim. I like that. It’s a very kind and tender way to talk about yourself. Almost, but not quite putting yourself down because you don’t happen to be a scholar, sailor or wise man from the skies. I think you’re already a wise woman, a sailor of sometimes treacherous social seas, and a deep scholar of human life.

Now that you’re There, I wonder whether, as a Wise Woman from the skies, you might tell me where the place called “Morning” lies. Could you? Would you? It seems we have many lost souls here who are looking for that place. If not here, then where? Can you help us find it? Or at least send us a little poem about it?

Your pen pal, Elouise ♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 27 July 2017
Photo found at collegewritingpoetry.wordpress.com
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Hidden

16 Comments
May 29, 2017

The Life we have is very great

Here’s a second look at Emily Dickinson’s poem about Life, Infinity, and the Human Heart. A good poem for today when we’re missing family members or friends for any reason, plus Covid-19, political standoffs, hate crimes, or the harsh reality of wildfires, avalanches and hurricanes. My comments follow.

The Life we have is very great.
The Life that we shall see
Surpasses it, we know, because
It is Infinity.
But when all Space has been beheld
And all Dominion shown
The smallest Human Heart’s extent
Reduces it to none.

c. 1870

Emily Dickinson Poems, Edited by Brenda Hillman
 Shambhala Pocket Classics, Shambhala 1995

It doesn’t matter how many worlds we discover beyond this world. It doesn’t matter how far the distance is from here to there and beyond. It doesn’t even matter that the universe is still expanding.

None of this, as surpassingly great or expansive as it may be, holds a candle to the smallest of human hearts.

According to Emily, the Life we now have is ‘very great.’ The Life we’ll have beyond this Life is even greater. Yet it’s infinitesimal compared to what our hearts can see and grasp right now.

Emily describes the heart’s capacity to love Life. Especially when we can’t see those we love. She suggests that the expansiveness of one small human heart outshines infinity itself.

Yes, it’s fascinating to explore the universe, what may lie beyond it and how it’s ordered. Yet what we discover externally will never match the capacity of one small human heart to connect with another human heart.

It doesn’t matter whether that heart is what we call dead or alive, here or there, or somewhere in between. Nor do we need to understand exactly what Space encompasses, how it is governed, or where Infinity resides.

This isn’t about measuring or mapping Life beyond our present Life. Or discovering where those we love now reside.

It’s about connections. All it takes is one small human heart to leap beyond unmapped, immeasurable boundaries, expanding outward in a heartbeat to enfold the hearts of those we love. No matter where they or we may be.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, first posted 28 May 2017, lightly edited and reposted 10 December 2020
Image taken from Hubble Spacecraft, found at nasa.gov

9 Comments
February 11, 2017

Awareness of pain

Awareness of pain
Life-shaping yet elusive
Lodges deep
In bones and sinews
Erupts without warning
Bleeding over pages
Of my life
Softening my heart
Longing for tenderness
Squandered in the past
Foolishly given away
To dull my pain

***

I don’t live in this awareness every day. I wouldn’t survive if I did. I’m grateful for God’s grace every day of my life. Still, moments of grief arrive, often taking me by storm. They don’t destroy me. Instead, they soften and connect me not just to my pain, but to that of others.

I used to think these waves of emotional and spiritual pain would fade. They haven’t. In fact, the more willing I am to live with grief, the more I find myself grieving and growing.

This past week I listened to Beethoven’s Sonata 8 (“Pathetique) and found myself right where this poem is. In the middle of a teary eruption. The kind that fosters life, not death, when I’m willing to live through it.

You can listen to a brilliant performance by Daniel Barenboim here.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 11 February 2017
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Aware

14 Comments
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