Tag Archives: grief

Your Clear Refusal of Our World

My aunt Ros was organizing some books a couple of weeks ago, when one of them fell and opened to this poem…

 

For a Child Born Dead

What ceremony can we fit

You in now? If you had come

Out of a warm and noisy room

To this, there’d be an opposite

For us to know you by. We could

Imagine you in a lively mood

 

And then look at the other side,

The mood drawn out of you, the breath

Defeated by the power of death.

But we have never seen you stride

Ambitiously the world we know.

You could not come and yet you go.

 

But there is nothing now to mar

Your clear refusal of our world.

Not in our memories can we mould

You or distort your character.

Then all our consolation is

That grief can be as pure as this.

                                                      -Elizabeth Jennings (1926)

 

Ros typed the poem out, printed it and glued it to the back of a little chickadee painting photo, which she sent to us.

The poem struck me and brought me to tears.

Elizabeth, the author of this poem, describes the sudden death of her child as “your clear refusal of our world.”

Oh how rejected I felt by my daughter when she died.

“We created such a beautiful home for you!” I cried after her death. “We got everything ready. I dusted, cleaned, planted a garden, raked leaves; we hammered in every nail on the back porch so your soft, fat legs didn’t get scraped by them. I practiced Spanish and French so you could hear me in the womb and grow up bilingual! I meditated with you every morning, I read you books, I imagined your whole life stretched out in front of us. We were going to take you on bicycle tours, take you to France to meet your relatives, take you to India to hang out with your monk uncle! You were going to have such an awesome life! Why didn’t you want it? Why didn’t you want us? How could you leave me like this?”

But then Elizabeth says, “Not in our memories can we mould or distort your character. Then, all our consolation is that grief can be pure as this.”

Chickadee was and is the perfect child. She never grew up and became tainted by the many sorrows of this world. She never had a drug problem, or yelled at me “I hate you!”. She never became depressed.

How true are Elizabeth’s words to me.

Later, I reread the poem and examined the date on which it had been written. 1926. That was almost a hundred years ago.

Almost a hundred years ago this woman experienced a loss and grief so similar to mine that the poem she wrote is one I could have written.

Grief is universal. Joy is universal. Pain is universal. Happiness is universal. Who knew that a grief this specific could be so universal? I knew and yet I needed this poem as a reminder.

Whatever you are feeling right now, whatever pain you are experiencing, whatever longing you’re having, remember this:

You are not alone.

Somewhere in the world, and at many points in history, there is someone who has felt or is feeling what you are feeling. Someone has gone through what you’re going through. Someone is going through what you are currently experiencing. Someone will experience what you are going through in the future.

Thank you, Elizabeth Jennings, for writing that poem, and Ros for finding it and sending it to us. 🙂

P.S. We are going to be releasing an E.P. in honor of our daughter’s one year anniversary, called “Chickadee”. When you preorder the album, your name will be printed on the inside of the album cover, to memorialize you as one of the people who made the project possible. Click here to preorder: https://thelovesprockets.bandcamp.com/album/chickadee

P.P.S. If you preorder “Chickadee” for $25 or more, you will get a surprise in the mail along with the new album (it might be a beautifully hand painted pair of underwear, a T-shirt, a postcard, who knows?) Click here to preorder: https://thelovesprockets.bandcamp.com/album/chickadee

Dear Everyone

Dear Everyone,

It has been a lonely time

Inside of here

 

No, there have been people

People to see

People to hear

People to call

But I hope to learn

To love you all

While sitting this one out

 

It gets dark in here

I’m not sure how I feel

Just a hollow

A tightness in my throat

 

She’s gone

She is really gone

I held on

Until it didn’t hurt too much

To let her go

 

And now there’s this big gone-ness

Where she once was

An open space

That a bird flies across

So vast

It’s an endless sky

But it fits inside

Me

Like she fit inside

Me

 

She’ll never not be with me

And so it hurts

Deeply

To have her leave

And see

How no one will talk to me

 

The fear is great

The fear to say or do the wrong thing

It’s safer to leave me alone

And wait

I understand

 

I also understand

That you can’t understand

And if you do

I am so sorry

 

If you do understand

Let me give you this embrace

Let me hold you so you can cry

And let me tell you that I am sorry

 

I’m sorry that you know what this feels like

And even if they are afraid to be there for you

You can learn to love

Everyone

Equally

 

Because we all want

To be happy

We all want to be free

From pain

And so you see, we are all the same

 

Dear Everyone,

I know you cannot know

How it feels to watch her go

I know you cannot feel

The space she left behind

 

But maybe somewhere

Deep inside

A past life

A dream

You were a mother

Or a baby born who stopped breathing

An alternate ending

And so perhaps you do know

How it goes

 

And no matter what

I am learning that

I can love everyone

In spite

Of

My

Self