The End of Grief
I got up and made breakfast. Lorenzo, our long-haired Dachshund, came in looking for breakfast too.
I dreamed about him last night. We were at the vet’s, who told me he was overweight and needed to shed 10 pounds in one day. A friend who was there with me asked for an appointment to bring his dog in, but was told he had a past due bill.
I haven’t dreamed about my son Jesse lately, but I suspect he’s been appearing in disguise. For example, you don’t have to be a veterinarian to know it would not be healthy for a 12 pound dog to lose 10 pounds in one day, even if he’d ballooned up to 17 or 18 pounds, which he clearly had not in my dream. Yet Jesse lost or put on that much weight, or more, in a day at different points during his 3-month hospitalization.
And my friend in the dream? Jesse had a dog at his mother’s house who waited for him at his bedroom door for months before finally running away. On the past due bill, I don’t know . . . If Jesse hadn’t paid at the last visit with his dog, it’s not surprising it was past due, since Jesse was dead.
I’m not too concerned about whether or not my dream analysis hold water. I’m just glad it gave me something of Jesse, like maybe his touching my arm, lightly.
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I had been thinking about writing a post, called The End of Grief, in which I’d consider the possibility of grief ending and, if it happened to me, whether or not I’d have the courage to acknowledge it, or would hold on to my crutch.
I would draw on a 2006 interview with the poet Donald Hall, which I’d just come across unpacking boxes after our move to North Carolina. Hall’s wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, died in 1995, and the theme of the interview was grief.
I remembered reading it back then and thinking it was not conducted live but via e-mail, giving Hall time to consider his responses carefully. I also remembered his responses as somewhat impersonal, especially compared to the beautiful, heartbreaking poem he wrote about his wife’s illness and death. Here are a few lines from it:
no spring no summer no autumn no winter
no rain no peony thunder no woodthrush
without mice oak leaves windstorm
So little emotion in the interview, so much in the poem, though with the control of a master poet.
I read the interview again, present time. It was not neutral in tone but considered, thoughtful.
I also remembered reading a line, “I am not actively grieving now,” in 2006, and it hitting me like a gut punch. Reading the interview again, present time, this is what Hall actually said:
I still feel close to Jane here . . . Photographs of her occupy a wall in my study . . . But my grieving is no longer full-time.
Why had I taken his words as dry, almost cold? To challenge myself on the state of my then eleven-year-old grief after Jesse’s death in 1995, or take a dry run at a feeling that might pay me a visit later on?
Lorenzo wanted to go for a walk. We got halfway across the lawn when the thought came to me.
I never said goodbye.
This ‘realization’ was absurd. How could I have said goodbye to Jesse as he was dying when I’d never been able to talk with him about death? Illogical in Lifeworld but in Griefworld, eminently sensible.
I said goodbye.
Grief is an underground river.
Childress, MD. Telling suffering: A brief interview with Donald Hall. The Hedgehog Review, 2006, 8(3), 93-97.
Hall, D. Without. The Hedgehog Review, 2006, 8(3), 98-99, 98.
