On loss

I was thinking yesterday about the pain of loss. Does it go away? Are you damaged goods if you grieve for someone for nine years?

If Tanya could wish for anything today it would be for us to be happy. We are bereft at having been cast adrift from her but our view of her in our past is not fixed. As we sail away some details are dimmed, some can stay bright for a long time but eventually our feelings of loss will go over the horizon. Then again, there is a safe harbour in our sticking to what we know, by keeping that pain in sight, even if we can’t go all the way back. Here we float, and can only move on when we’re ready to. If we have the courage to dip our oars, our loss will always be there, there’s no denying it, but the empty place in us will be balanced I hope by the positive graces and self knowledge and so growth that the journey has given us.

There was a very gloomy impressionistic painting in our house that must have been given to my dad by a friend or student. It was very good but it has since disappeared, of a rowing boat in the moonlight; black water, a white luminescent boat and the blackest possible blue sky. 

Hearing distant music over the water, especially Big Bands, always brings on sadness. Listening to anything distant on the radio, faint over the ether, that must be avoided too. That is my sound portrait of grief.

p.s. I found the painting in the margin of a photo. I wonder where is it now?