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my father is waving
beckoning me
to come
an ocean divides us
him on one side
me on the other
when this ocean was new
we drove all night
and slept on the sand
its sound not a shell anymore
waking in the ocean night
I steal to the water's edge
the breakers beyond
me on one side
him on the other
the fear rising in mother's voice
his white face bobs above silver waves
laughing and calling
come on in
come on in
--Laura Treacy Bentley in Lake Effect (2006)
The holidays can be very hard for people who have recently lost someone they love. Here is a website with a few suggestions for this period. For example:
I could not bear to put a tree up for the first 4 Christmas's after her death. Last year a friend made a suggestion, since she knew that I was going to have to force myself to put one up. She said since the death of her daughter, every year she buys a new ornament and has it engraved for Niki, and she puts the year on each one in remembrance of her. I found that the ornaments could be bought at Walmart or Target, and the cost was in getting it engraved. But it did help. I had one done for each year since she died. Renee said it gives her a reason each year to do the tree because she looks forward to getting a new ornament for Niki. I found it did give me some satisfaction in doing this in remembrance of Cara. I was pleased and surprised that my sons and husband also greatly enjoyed having them on the tree and took the time to go an examine each one. Maybe this Christmas, this suggestion could help other families facing putting up that dreaded Christmas tree. --Netta
On November 14, 1970, a plane crashed in the rain in Huntington, West Virginia, killing the entire football team of Marshall University, along with team supporters and crew members. A major movie, "We Are Marshall," starring Matthew McConaughy, has just been made about the team, so the story is back in the news.
[Chester Reese, 71, father of Scottie Reese]
After nearly 30 years, the pain still is fresh each morning, Chester said, almost as if it renews itself overnight, culling from the darkness new power to hurt. "You don't forget it. You don't. It's something that happened and you can't do anything about it. I have to accept it.
"I have my bad moments. I do." He paused. "I get in my car and I ride. I ride out to the cemetery and visit his grave. I have a cry." He paused again, longer this time. "Sometimes I can't talk about it."
[Jimi Reese, 72, mother of Scottie Reese] "I think about him all the time," Jimi said. "Sometimes it seems like he's still around somewhere, like he can't be gone. When it gets round close to that day again, I start to think about it harder. Along about that time of (that) month, it gets pretty heavy.
"It ran through my mind the other day, how old he'd be, where he'd be."
Indeed, Scottie -- and all of the young men on the Marshall plane -- have now been dead longer than they were alive.
Her faith, Jimi indicated, remains a railing she can grasp when she feels as if she might be falling. "I was brought up not to say, 'Why him?' My mother said, 'He was only loaned to you. The Lord wanted him back.' Never question what the Lord does."
[Ruth Andrews, 77, mother of Mark, and Bob and Betty Harris, parents of Bobby]
The grief, all agreed with a chorus of nods, never goes away. It advances and retreats, it intensifies to an almost unbearable point and then backs off, but it never leaves.
"No," Bob said, shaking his head. "It's always with you." He added, "I didn't cry. I never have. I'm not able to. I wish I could."
[Ted and Yolanda Shoebridge, parents of Teddy; Terry and Tommy, his brothers]
Terry Shoebridge, 40, Teddy's brother, described the family's sorrow this way: "My parents' heart was ripped out on that day and it was never put back."
[Keith Morehouse, age 9 when his father Gene, the local sportcaster, died in the crash]
"In some ways, I feel kind of fortunate, as funny as that sounds. 
We will always remember him in his prime. We never had to see him grow old."
[Keith married Debbie Hagley, whose parents also died in the crash.]
"I don't think about the crash itself," Debbie said, "but once a day, for about a split second, it pops into my mind that I really wish my parents could have seen my kids." She and her siblings were raised by their grandparents.
Her grief, Debbie said, has had a discernible trajectory. "It took several years to get to a certain point. But then, it came to a standstill. For the past 10 or 15 years, I've felt the same way. I'm OK with it. I say, 'My parents were killed in the Marshall plane crash,' and I can say it without crying."
She paused. "They were 33 when they died. I'm older than that now. Sometimes I think, 'Were they ever really here?' "
Several of her friends recently have suffered through the deaths of their parents, Debbie said. "I find myself thinking, 'Well, for me, that's over and done with. I've already been through that.' "
--From an article by Julia Keller, published in the Chicago Tribune on Sept. 5, 1999
The Snow
In no way that I chose to go
could I escape the falling snow.
I shut my eyes, wet with my fears:
the snow still whispered at my ears.
I stopped my ears in deaf disguise:
the snow still fell before my eyes.
Snow was my comrade, snow my fate,
in a country huge and desolate.
My footsteps made a shallow space,
and then the snow filled up the place,
and all the walking I had done
was on a journey not begun.
I did not know the distance gone,
but resolutely travelled on
while silently on every hand
fell the sorrow of the land,
and no way that I chose to go
could lead me from the grief of snow.
--Clifford Dyment (1914-1971)
Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter
There was such speed in her little body,
and such lightness in her footfall,
it is no wonder her brown study
astonishes us all.
Her wars were bruited in our high window.
We looked among orchard trees and beyond
where she took arms against her shadow,
or harried unto the pond
the lazy geese, like a snow cloud
dripping their snow on the green grass,
tricking and stopping, sleepy and proud,
who cried in goose, Alas,
for the tireless heart within the little
lady with rod that made them rise
from their noon apple-dream and scuttle
goose-fashion under the skies!
But now go the bells, and we are ready,
In one house we are stern stopped
to say we are vexed at her brown study,
lying so primly propped.
--John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)
April 1918
You, whose forebodings have been all fulfilled,
you who have heard the bell, seen the boy stand
holding the flimsy message in his hand
while through your heart the fiery question thrilled
"Wounded or killed, which, which?"--and it was "Killed--"
and in a kind of trance have read it, numb
but conscious that the dreaded hour was come,
no dream this dream wherewith your blood was chilled--
oh brothers in calamity, unknown
companions in the order of black loss,
lift up your hearts, for you are not alone,
and let our sombre hosts together bring
their sorrows to the shadow of the Cross
and learn the fellowship of suffering.
--Henry Christopher Bradby (1868-1947)
Victor Hugo's beloved daughter Leopoldine died at age 19, drowned tragically a few months after she was married. Her young husband died trying to save her. Hugo had always felt especially close to his eldest daughter, born when he was only 22, and never completely got over her death.
He learned about it from a newspaper article five days afterward, while on a long trip away from his family with his mistress. He wrote to a friend the next day, "I have read. That is how I learned that half my life and my heart was
dead. O my God, what have I done to you? God doesn't want us to have
heaven on earth. He took her back. Oh, my poor angel, to think that I
won't ever see her again."
He did not visit her tomb till three years later.
"Hugo apprend la nouvelle de ce décès le 9 septembre dans un journal à Rochefort, sur le chemin de retour d’un voyage qu’il faisait avec Juliette Drouet en Espagne. Il écrit le 10 septembre à Louise Bertin : " J’ai lu. C’est ainsi que j’ai appris que la moitié de ma vie et de mon cœur était morte (…). O mon Dieu, que vous ai-je fait ! (…) Dieu ne veut pas qu’on ait le paradis sur la terre. Il l’a reprise. Oh ! mon pauvre ange, dire que je ne la reverrai plus ".
Il ne se rendra sur sa tombe qu’en septembre 1846.
I've lived long enough now, since in my sorrows
I walk without finding an arm to help me,
since I scarcely laugh at the children around me,
since flowers don't cheer me up any more;
since in the springtime, when God makes nature celebrate,
I witness, joylessly, this splendid love;
since I am at the hour when a man flees the daylight,
alas, 
and feels the secret sadness of everything;
since the serene hope in my soul is vanquished;
since in this season of perfumes and roses,
O my daughter! I aspire to the shadow where you are resting,
since my heart is dead-- I've lived long enough now.
I have not refused my task on earth.
My furrow? There it is. My sheaf? Here it is.
I have lived smiling, ever kinder,
upstanding, but leaning toward mystery.
I have done what I could; I have served, I have watched by night,
and I have often seen them laughing at my trouble.
I have been amazed to be an object of hatred,
having suffered much and worked much.
In this earthly prison where no wing can spread,
without complaining, bleeding, and falling on my hands,
gloomy, exhausted, mocked by human galley-slaves,
I have carried my link in the eternal chain.
Now, my eyelids are only half-open;
I don't turn around any more when they call me;
I am dazed and listless, like a man
who gets up before dawn and has not slept.
I don't even deign any more, in my somber sloth,
to answer the envious whose mouths hurt me.
O Lord! open the gates of night for me,
so I can go away and vanish!
--Victor Hugo (1802-1885). His beloved daughter Léopoldine had died accidentally, drowned at age 19..
J'ai bien assez vécu, puisque dans mes douleurs
Je marche sans trouver de bras qui me secourent,
Puisque je ris à peine aux enfants qui m'entourent,
Puisque je ne suis plus réjoui par les fleurs ;
Puisqu'au printemps, quand Dieu met la nature en fête,
J'assiste, esprit sans joie, à ce splendide amour ;
Puisque je suis à l'heure où l'homme fuit le jour,
Hélas ! et sent de tout la tristesse secrète ;
Puisque l'espoir serein dans mon âme est vaincu ;
Puisqu'en cette saison des parfums et des roses,
O ma fille ! j'aspire à l'ombre où tu reposes,
Puisque mon cœur est mort, j'ai bien assez vécu.
Je n'ai pas refusé ma tâche sur la terre.
Mon sillon ? Le voilà. Ma gerbe ? La voici.
J'ai vécu souriant, toujours plus adouci,
Debout, mais incliné du côté du mystère.
J'ai fait ce que j'ai pu ; j'ai servi, j'ai veillé,
Et j'ai vu bien souvent qu'on riait de ma peine.
Je me suis étonné d'être un objet de haine,
Ayant beaucoup souffert et beaucoup travaillé.
Dans ce bagne terrestre où ne s'ouvre aucune aile,
Sans me plaindre, saignant, et tombant sur les mains,
Morne, épuisé, raillé par les forçats humains,
J'ai porté mon chaînon de la chaîne éternelle.
Maintenant, mon regard ne s'ouvre qu'à demi ;
Je ne me tourne plus même quand on me nomme ;
Je suis plein de stupeur et d'ennui, comme un homme
Qui se lève avant l'aube et qui n'a pas dormi.
Je ne daigne plus même, en ma sombre paresse,
Répondre à l'envieux dont la bouche me nuit.
O Seigneur ! ouvrez-moi les portes de la nuit,
Afin que je m'en aille et que je disparaisse !
...The old house
Is full of ghosts, dear ghosts on stair and landing,
Ghosts in chamber and hall; garden and walk
Are marvellous with ghosts, where so much love
Dwelt for a little while and made such music,
Before it too was taken by the tide
That takes us all, of time's receding music.
Oh, all is music! All has been turned to music!
All that is vanished has been turned to music!
And these familiar rafters, that have known
The child, the young man and the man, now shelter
The aging man, who lies here, listening, listening--
All night, in a half dream, I have lain here listening.
--John Hall Wheelock (1886-1978), from his poem "Night Thoughts in Age" in Modern Verse in English, 1900-1950 (pub. 1958)
