“There is a sacredness in tears.
They are not the mark of weakness,
but of power.
They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues.
They are messengers of overwhelming grief...
and unspeakable love.”
-Washington Irving
I have so many tears... yet to fall. I can't find the right place or time to let them go...which is why I know I feel such pain inside... I long to let them speak. They have so much to say. But everywhere are demands of life - I have not found the right place or time to speak in tears. But, I know they have much to say. Yet I am saving them - as sacred. I pray the right time will come soon - as I honor them - they are precious to me and I am at a place where it must be just right because I have so many that my heart is soaking in - I'm becoming a perfectionist in my own grief, but I can't help it - so this agony and heavy weight I carry is my own fault - because I will not let it out until the right moment arises.
This quote is so perfect - so perfect - I treasure it for how exactly it depicts the truth of tears as strong, sacred and beautiful. It is worth it to wait - three people - they are worth the right moment to lament, to anguish and let tears burn my eyes... each are worth it - and are deserving of sadness and tears. Gwen. Marie... and the one of late whom I don't even want to speak - maybe the tears will help me let it be... let it be. But for now - no. No. No.
One day - when I can - I can't wait to splay it all out here - what I've learned from reading (or skimming as it were, frantically skimming and underling) various books written by others in their grief... there is so much to say - so much to say to mark it here for myself and anyone else stumbling around in similar darkness who trips over here- so much to say about why we as humans, even with a loving God who we may believe has those lost to us here, even with the strongest Faith - we are supposed to lament, be sad and grieve like hell.
Grief and its sadness and biting, desolate sorrow - I believe must move through us - so that we can feel joy again. They require time in our souls and then they move through and then let us rest a bit. And then they return. Move through. And work inside us - and we sink down again into it. And they go again. It is not self-pity - it is love. I wish it were self-pity. I wish there was control...I wish it was easy to hold it all back as I wait for the right time - I know it is not healthy to hold it back...and I know I'm causing my own heaviness in this. And yet I'm choosing to withold the rest that tears bring.
Augustine said it best:
"THE TEARS...streamed down, and I let them flow as freely as they would,
making of them a pillow for my heart. On them it rested."
And yet - even as I say that, I wish it could be different. I wish I could step out with some sort of dignity and say I have found comfort and rest in God "peace beyond understanding" as everyone wishes me with their kind words - but instead - I know - that the comfort only comes from simply knowing - He knows this pain and has felt this sad and learned the limitations of human skin and knows the imperfect love that abounds here regardless, because of our humanity - knows the Fallen world for what it is - and laments and cries with me in the moment I'm stuck here without - for every moment here without. That is my comfort, if any from my Faith, - is that I'm expected and understood in feeling THIS sad.
And then I do - I can't say I'm sure of God - or Christ as God experiencing the powerlessness and anguish of "body clothes" and all that is involved in that - or anything my heart has whispered telling me of connections still... Fear and doubt. They make me tea, or probably more correctly, a strong cocktail or wicked shot of something powerful, while I sit and converse with Faith. They hand it to me and I drink it, and keep talking.
From Gwen's blog - after she left... I'm still here. Co-existing with Faith and Fear and Doubt. Choosing Faith because the alternative sucks. But that's kinda all, right now. Nice huh? Anyway, here it is - from Gwen's blog...me quote a quote:
"I just randomly picked up my little "handbook," called, Healing After Loss...I read this...:
Faith is a way of waiting - never quite knowing, never quite hearing or seeing, because in the darkness we are all but a little lost. There is doubt hard on the heels of every belief, fear hard on the heels of every hope. - Frederick Buechner
...If that doesn't cut to the theme of where I wandered today in writing this silly thing. That's it. Right there. Doubt and Fear as a strong, imposing-upon chasers to Belief and Hope."
Lovely place to exist. Holding back a ocean load of tears while dangling on a thin string called Faith.
I do feel like some type of insanity is flirting with my weak mind these days - just as before - as I teeter between Faith solid as a rock and Doubt, the hammer that can shatter that rock in one blow.
I'm as certain of the my failings as I am sure nothing could have been done regarding each death - each specific circumstance. Both exactly in the same moment. Especially regarding my Gwyneth - she died at my hand - but God is God and he's got something going on I can't dream of or touch.
Which goes back to - who is inside my head? Will my heart ever settle and if so where will I land? Or, will I always live and feel a bit disconnected from the world - laughingly cynical on the inside - while spouting Faith on the outside (it looks better...and you can keep people at bay that way - and sometimes I do even believe the words that slip out...I'm convincing logical and carefully skeptical). But can I stand being a hypocrite - can I live a split existence - with an exterior I "sell" and an interior that is perhaps slightly insane?
And why does even calling a friend - even just one friend - seem like too much these days? Why can't I surmount depression - isn't it true what you look at disappears? I'm staring it in the face - I see it sapping my energy away - yet I can't pick up the phone and call my very dear and close friends while I'm here in NY and can visit them in person - what is that? Is it just too much energy to try to relate to "normal" people right now? Isn't friendship more important than self-wallowing depression?
I can write about it - yet I retreat. I don't call. Then I feel so guilty and I am frustrated with myself and I have no capacity for that - so I sink further down. A spiral in hell.
Maybe I'll call tomorrow. I should call. I should want to call. Instead I just want to be away, alone, working towards the time when I can cry like hell. Trying to piece my heart together until then, looking for light and trying to capture it here - trying to make sense of where I live now - even if I make it up.
BUT really, REALLY? Haven't I learned that life is for the living and that I must appreciate everyone here - because you never know when they won't be... Okay. I will. I will call. I will. I can't write that to myself and not try to exist here with people I love - as it is true - my life has become two cliche's -one being "hindsight is 20/20" and the other to "appreciate what you have," the people in your life, while they are here...
I will. But I can't help it - I'm as "called" to be sad for those lost to us here as I am convicted of the importance of the moment, and appreciating and connecting to the people in my life. And to it is hard to honor both - it is.
I'm tried and depleted. I'm so tired.
