My brother died on November 1, 2020. To say I have not been the same since is both incredibly obvious and difficult to articulate. Grief is an evolution, and so far the beginning has been painful, dull, and aching.
The first thing I asked for from my best friend was poetry - send me anything you think might help, I texted her. Poetry has been a common love language in our friendship since we were in high school. She sent links, attachments, forwarded emails from her mother who wanted to help too. I shared some online, I deleted some that didn’t serve me as the saying goes, and I kept some for myself. The one I posted first, and keeps coming back to me regularly is Joanna Klink’s “On Falling (Blue Spruce)"
Dusk fell every night. Things
fall. Why should I
have been surprised.Before it was possible
to imagine my life
without it, the windsarrived, shattering air
and pulling the tree
so far back its roots,ninety years, ripped
and sprung. I think
as it fell it becameunknowable. Every day
of my life now I cannot
understand. The forceof dual winds lifting
ninety years of stillness
as if it were nothing,as if it hadn’t held every
crow and fog, emptying
night from its branches.The needles fell. The pinecones
dropped every hour
on my porch, a constantirritation. It is enough
that we crave objects,
that we are alwayslooking for a way
out of pain. What is beyond
task and future sits rightbefore us, endlessly
worthy. I have planted
a linden, with its delicateclean angles, on a plot
one tenth the size. Some change
is too great.Somewhere there is a field,
white and quiet, where a tree
like this one stands,made entirely of
hovering. Nothing will
hold me up like that again.
My best friend has encouraged me to write, knowing better than I do that it will help. So she sends me weekly writing prompts and I try to reply to them honestly and fully. Now that I have a few, I thought I would put them out here: for accountability, for preservation, for a chance to see what it might do to me and for me.
On a lighter note, I genuinely believe I have good recommendations for links and products on the Internet lol. I have been told I should start a newsletter. It simultaneously embarrasses me to no end, and is something I want to do and think I would be good at doing.
weekly wanderings:
Back to my roots (h/t @allieg)
Possible birthday gift for a certain someone in my life? (h/t @lollierey)