Putting to Rest
Nov 10 2024
When she said complicated grief
I wondered
is there any other kind?
A simple grief
that gets along nicely
without guilt, regret, or longing.
Without doubt, or second-guessing
or things left unresolved.
Without anger
resentment
and feelings long repressed,
and without the anguish and pain
as you struggle to accept.
Grief
that can be put to rest
easily enough.
That doesn’t erupt
unexpectedly
when you thought the grieving was done;
feelings
that were never expunged
from your subconscious depths.
Grief
that needn’t be shared
because it’s easy to bear alone.
That the passage of time
saps of its power.
So simple grief
you can easily leave
behind a closed closet door.
The “closure” they promise
in the fullness of time.
As if you ever simply normalize,
get over it,
move on.
Despite the date, this didn’t begin as a Remembrance Day poem. Although it might be read as one.
Actually, I was reading an article on MAID that talked about the essential role of ritual — a rite of passage — in providing a good ending in the fraught context of a planned death. Which is something new to the human experience (if you don’t count executions!). In it, she used the words “complicated grief”, and I immediately thought “is there any other kind?” Which is as good an opening line for a poem as any other. And so it became.
https://globe2go.pressreader.com/article/283205858788595
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