Love this lady. We used this photo for the prayer cards.And just so we're clear, I don't normally read The New Yorker but found this article after reading another of Meghan O'Rourke's pieces that was recommended to me. I'd hate for you to think I'm smarter than I am.
6 comments:
Beautiful piece and much of it resonated with me. I can still call up the death of my two siblings who never returned home from the hospital. I become the small child on the stairs as my dad gives me the news that the baby died and that that scene was repeated again. I become the small child, but as an adult I also become the father who brings the new, and the mother who never speaks of it but whose grief I now recognize. And the grief is sharp, perhaps sharper, than on those days so many years ago. So there was no "getting over" the loss, it doesn't go away. All we can do is continue to live, sometimes with the grief as our sentient companion, sometimes with it less obtrusive, but it never leaves. I love that the author ended with Dickinson who expresses the unexpressable so well. This is my favorite:
After Great Pain
After great pain, a formal feeling comes--
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs--
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round--
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought--(1)
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone--
This is the Hour of Lead--
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow--
First--Chill--then Stupor--then the letting go--
Sweet Lola...
I miss that smile...her hair, her laugh, her calling me sweetie or her bethy. Just everything.
Beautiful article. Thanks for sharing.
Sending you love & strength always my cousin. I love you.
Beth the Anonymous
xoxo
Laura, thank you for the links to those 2 articles. Both were very thought provoking and as with Talk2mrsh, they resonated deeply with me as well, and I'm sure with many others.
Lo - First of all - great photo! I wish I had had the pleasure of meeting her....
The articles were great. I sent them to my former employer's daughter (if you recall, the lady I worked for also had lung cancer. She was the one who refused to tell anyone she was dying.)
Thinking of you all the time.
xoxo BFYFM
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
John Donne
I read the shorter article first (a while ago) and was blown away by her expression and how her experience seemes to parallel yours in so many ways. I thought it could have been you writing at times.
I finally just got to reading the second article - fascinating on so many levels. Thanks for sharing.
Love, Mart
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