Putting to Rest - Nov 10 2024

 

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