DECEMBER Piece by piece, I reenter the world A new phase A new body, a new voice Birds console me by flying, trees by growing, dogs by the warm patch they leave on the sofa Unknown people merely by performing their motions It’s like a slow recovery from a sickness, this recovery of one’s self —TOBY TALBOT Back when our grief was fresh, we thought this would never happen—that we would take pleasure in the small, ordinary events of life Back then, we thought our perception of the world would always be dominated by this piercing, overriding loss So we’re twice blessed when, a bit at a time, we begin to savor once more the lovely ongoing processes by which life is quietly fostered, day by day We’re twice blessed because the sharp teeth of our loss no longer bite into our consciousness all the time, and because we’re aware of the wonderful life-sustaining things going on around us—like red cardinals against a winter snow or the warmth of fire when we have come in from the cold We used to take these for granted Then nothing was to be taken for granted anymore And now perhaps we—even we—can relax into the everyday and begin to trust life again I will open my eyes and stretch out my arms to the beauty and wonder of the world DECEMBER What’s gone and what’s past help Should be past grief —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Ah, but it isn’t! That’s part of what the grief is all about—that there’s no changing what’s happened, no help available for restoring what’s gone Shakespeare’s character Paulina, from The Winter’s Tale, admonishes with a message no more palatable to her listener than a modern counterpart would be to us: “Cheer up It’s over You can’t anything to change it Just accept it and go ahead with your life.” It’s bad enough if we hear this kind of advice from wellmeaning friends It’s worse yet if we regale ourselves with such exhortations and feel guilty if we can’t act on them Of course we don’t want to mope around, grieving forever But the surest way to avoid that is not to put caps on the wells of our grief and try to walk away, but to deal with grief honestly, experiencing its pain and anger for as long as we need to Then and only then will we be able to incorporate the meaning of our loss into our lives, and move ahead Assimilating this loss into my life is a long process, and I will give it its due DECEMBER When I asked the orthopedic surgeon who treated me whether people often fracture bones after bereavement, he said, without even looking up from my injured foot, “Naturally, people lose their sense of balance.” —LILY PINCUS Sometimes it’s not as specific as that—the body reacting with its own wounds to a wound of mind and spirit But it is well known that after a serious loss, our bodies are more prone to injury and disease So it behooves us to take particularly good care of ourselves—to be more careful about diet, about driving when we’re tired, and to try to get some extra rest Do we have more accidents because we’re depressed and don’t care as much about keeping ourselves healthy—even keeping ourselves alive? Are we careless because we’re preoccupied with grief? Is there something in the chemistry of grief that affects our immune system and makes it harder for our bodies to fight infection? The relationship between mind and body is being examined as never before, and there’s much that we don’t know But we know we are at extra risk, and in deference to ourselves and to those we love, we would well to take the best care of ourselves that we can I have much to live for, and I’ll live for it better if I’m healthy! DECEMBER When everything is dark, when we are surrounded by despairing voices, when we not see any exits, then we can find salvation in a remembered love, a love which is not simply a recollection of a bygone past but a living force which sustains us in the present Through memory, love transcends the limits of time and offers hope at any moment of our lives —HENRI NOUWEN I remember, as an adolescent, watching a Catholic friend “say” her rosary beads—touching each in turn while saying the prescribed prayer I was intrigued and puzzled—this expression of faith was far from my free church Protestant heritage in which we did nothing by rote except murmur the Lord’s Prayer each Sunday But the image of precious beads on a string has stayed with me, and I sometimes think of treasured memories in this way The time my husband and I had just started dating and I told him I was going to a distant city and he thought I meant for good; the look on his face when he said, “I’m sorry to hear that,” is a memory I have treasured for more than forty years Or the time my daughter expressing her pride in a poem I had written, asked, “Can I take it to school and show it to my teacher?” The love emanating from my memories is eternal DECEMBER 10 Even as I stood there, the tears streaming down my face, I felt a kind of joy for him, a strange gaiety almost, that he would so soon be released, and I had a sense that he stood now on the threshold of some great adventure…So it was in a strange way not only a time of terrible sorrow, but a moment of light, as I stood there telling him goodbye —MARTHA WHITMORE HICKMAN It was my father who lay on the bed, dying I had expected the sorrow Though I have faith in a life beyond death, I had not expected the strange rush of happiness, the expectation of adventure and joy Not right then So it was all the more a gift, though a fleeting one None of us knows what lies on the other side of death, but we have had clues—in stories handed down, in experiences of our own, in books detailing near-death experiences—that offer great hope and promise that beyond death are light and welcome and unimaginable peace and joy What comfort these clues can be to us on the dark days We pore over them as over rosary beads—Yes, we think Hope is justified Everything will turn out right in the end In my times of darkness, lead me to the light ... Then and only then will we be able to incorporate the meaning of our loss into our lives, and move ahead Assimilating this loss into my life is a long process, and I will give it its due DECEMBER... body reacting with its own wounds to a wound of mind and spirit But it is well known that after a serious loss, our bodies are more prone to injury and disease So it behooves us to take particularly... DECEMBER When I asked the orthopedic surgeon who treated me whether people often fracture bones after bereavement, he said, without even looking up from my injured foot, “Naturally, people lose