When I thought I had it all figured out, I was lost,
now that I am lost, maybe I'm on my way to being found.

"You can't always look in the rear view mirror when you are driving."

 "Call back the energy you are wasting on events of the past."



   I am blessed to have you in my life, it is an eternal having, nothing can separate you from me.

  Your physical absence is so difficult to hold that I have to dream you here with me like before.



   "layer upon layer of who we thought we are falls away." Thomas Merton

     I pray to let the layers fall away.

     I pray for you with all my heart.

"I lost his body but not his soul.  He's with  me every day."  Sondra Beaulieu, The Other Side of Sadness


I have to believe it's true, although many times I can't feel it.
I have to trust in a bigger picture, a letting go of what I know with my head, and go with my heart.
You can not be gone, it can not be.

I keep your soul in here, with me.

I pray for you.

I pray to keep going, keep living, to go  out into the world again and find peace and joy.

"People overwhelmed by grief simply give up,they stop participating in life and dwell on the past. They need help structuring more activity into their lives."
The Other Side of Sadness


I pray to find a way to do that.
I know that giving up is not helping.
I understand that dwelling in the past has not helped me move forward.
I haven't wanted to move forward.

there I said it.
Losing you is not something I can accept, and yet acceptance is the only way to continue.

But I know when I was this cute little girl you wanted to give me the world,
and that you still do.


I need to begin moving toward something.


I don't know what that is.
I pray for guidance, yours, God's, all the angels in all the heavens, I know you're busy but steer a little cloud of guidance my way.

I pray for that.
I pray to rest that you are at peace.

I pray for your peace.

"Our lives are changed and they will never be the same.  But in a way, I think I'm probably going to be a better person than I would have been had I not lost our daughter.

And I guess that's because you become more aware of how you deal with others, and how you think about others."  The Other Side of Sadness, a mother who lost her child in 9/11.


I feel that way too.
I hope I'm on my way to becoming a better person.

I pray for that.
Let me be a better person.

I pray for you.
I pray for us.

I pray for all of us who have lost our loved one.

Amen.

my old story


I know you will guide me in whatever way you can
to live life here and now.

I know you will love me for eternity however you can.

I know I will love you eternally when I am on this earth and when I am gone.

that's all I know.

how you went and where you went and what lies beyond are all mysteries to me.

mysteries I will never solve.

I'm dead to myself and I have to find a way to be alive.

"even when a death is foreseen, I was surprised to find, it still feels sudden - an instant that could have gone differently.  If only I could find a flaw in the story.
I thought, if I could find the right turning point, then perhaps - like Orpheus - I could bring the one I sought back from the dead."  The Long Goodbye



 I'm still looking for the flaw in the story.
 when will it stop ?

  I don't think it ever will.

 the yearning for you,   it will go on and on.

 What can I pray for?  I don't know. right now, I pray to get through this, to not fall apart.

 that's all I can pray for.

 and that you are safe and protected.

"Energy returns to its source." Einstein, via Shirley Maclaine

"The departed one has just gone on to another level of understanding."  Shirley Maclaine


yes, yes, yes.
let it be.

returned, and yet still here, in another form, another space.

You are with  me.

I pray for acceptance of the mysterious, the miraculous, the unknown.

"The dominant element of grief was a restless searching.  Grief resembles the anxiety that children feel when they're separated from their mothers."  The Long Goodbye

   Restless searching.  the constant question: Where are you?

  and it will never be answered. Never.


   "As we fail over and over to find the lost person, we slowly create a new world, the old one having been invalidated by death."  The Long Goodbye

    for me it's at glacial speed - the slowly creating a new world. I'm still clinging desperately to the old one.
    and feel I'll never let it go. Never.

     "But grief left me perhaps too aware of the transience of everything."
      Everything seems here and yet already gone. It's something I can't understand.
 
     And a year feels like a minute. How does that happen?

    "Sorrow turns out not to be a state but a process.  It needs not a map but a history."  C.S. Lewis


      Dora Carrington wrote about the passing away of her husband Lytton Strachey, "that everyday for the rest of my life you will be away."

      I pray for your soul, wherever you have drifted to, walked to, run to, floated to, swam to, whatever way you got there,
      I pray there were loved ones waiting for you, holding you and keeping you in love.

"The bereaved cannot communicate with the unbereaved."  Iris Murdoch

"Heraklitos wrote that we assume a new identity in death as a guardian of both the living and the dead."  Franz Wright

I'm counting on that new identity, if not, I can not bear it.

How can a year feel like a minute, an hour, yesterday.  I don't understand.

"Cry your eyes out when you want, be gentle with yourself."  Susan Merz Anderson

"there's a wishing futilely for the world to make sense again."  The Long Goodbye"   Meghan O'Rourke

"The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created."   Colin Murray Parkes


"Even when a death is foreseen, I was surprised to find, it still feels sudden - an instant that could have gone differently.  If I could find a flaw in the story, I thought, if I could find the right turning point, then perhaps, like Orpheus, I could bring the one I sought back from the dead." 


All this searching and wondering and I always arrive at the same point, my head inside a book, then the book is finished, and there's no answer to finally solve the mystery.

You are not here with me, and I am here without you.  There's nothing worse. nothing.

My prayers have gone unanswered, except if you are safe and at peace, if you exist on some other plane, joyful and loving, still loving me, then the prayer I prayed every day has been answered.  But I will never know.

"Love fills you when you give it away."  St. Francis of Assisi

You have my love and you always will.

I pray to keep your love alive. Forever.

"Across the years I will walk with you in deep green forests; on shores of sand
and when our time on earth is through, in heaven, too, you will have my hand." Robert Sexton

My hand is with yours, forever and always.
I pray you know that my hand is with yours.
I pray for heaven and earth to be joined.
 I pray for you in heaven.
 

"Peace be with you."

I pray for peace to be yours,
eternally,
and for peace to claim my heart,
and know you are.
as I am.

Resurrection

Jesus resurrected. went among his friends and family to comfort them.
you are resurrected
I may resurrect too
one fine day
soon.

 here in the sun under the blue Florida sky -
 listening to the morning sounds of southern birds, you are everywhere.

from the review of "Say Her Name."    Francisco Goldman revives her through the only power left to him.  So remarkable is this resurrection that at times I felt the book itself had a pulse.  Throughout the book, he furiously attempts to hold on to what can be kept: mittens, hats, rings, as if they have the power to anchor him to the world."


If I could create something, a song, a book, a film that would resurrect you, that would be my greatest accomplishment.

I pray to create something to revive you.

I pray for you to be known in this world and the next.


Maybe it's enough that I knew you.