Grief’s Liturgy. Gerald J. Postema
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than those who watch for the morning.
—Psalm 130:1–2a, 6 (NRSV)
Time is the canvas
Stretched by my pain.
—Rilke
Grief’s Anguish: Night throws darkness over the grieving soul. Daylight sometimes makes it possible to see through the fog of sadness, but nighttime drives out that one grace. Nighttime is the hour of grief’s anguish. Nighttime can happen any hour of the day. Sometimes, as Rilke puts it, grief encases me like a massive rock:
I am so deep inside it
I can’t see the path or any distance:
everything is close
and everything closing in on me
has turned to stone.
It is like nothing else in my experience; I am unable to get my bearings, movement seems impossible.
Since I still don’t know enough about pain,
this terrible darkness makes me small.
In my grieving, I have allowed sadness in the door when it knocked. But grief’s anguish never stands politely at the door. It doesn’t knock, it doesn’t announce itself. It bursts in, bludgeons me, grabs me by my jaw and reaches down into my stomach and pulls my gut inside out. Grief’s anguish is raw, utterly physical. It rudely shoves thought entirely out of the room. It is mindless and mad. Uncontrollable. Demonic. I am in its power, powerless; suspended, lifted off the ground and out of time. I am unable to see beyond the moment, unable to see. The cries echoing from the walls around me startle me with their ugliness.
The pain continues to wave over me!
Stop it, O God,
please stop it!
. . .
I think I’m in control,
but I can’t stop
the undulating ache
that wells up suddenly
and overwhelms me
until I collapse
from grief.
—Ann Weems
Grief’s anguish can be conjured by a thought or memory, by the to-do list found in the bedside table, the unfinished knitting on the closet shelf.
Remembered happiness is agony;
so is remembered agony.
I live in a present compelled
By anniversaries and objects:
your pincushion; your white slipper;
. . .
the label basil in a familiar hand;
a stain on flowery sheets.
—Donald Hall
It takes nothing more than touching something of hers to blow the door wide open. One of the most powerful attacks of grief’s anguish came when I brushed against one of Linda’s favorite jackets hanging in the closet next to my sport coat.
Grief, at its deepest, is physical. Utterly, frighteningly physical.
“How much does matter matter?” the poet Mary Jo Bang asks. “Very.” is her simple answer.
What I want desperately is Linda’s touch. The pain of its absence is sharper than the thrust of any knife.
The pain is evident in the icon of the Lamenting Virgin.
Lamenting Virgin (Theotokos Threnousa)
The depth of the virgin’s grief is evident in her deep-set eyes; too deep, it seems, for tears. Yet it is not her countenance that expresses the deepest truth of grief; it is her gesture. The inclination of Mary’s head and the position of her hands recall other, much more familiar icons. In one, Theotokos Eelousa (Virgin of Compassion) or Theotokos Glykophilousa (Virgin of Tenderness)—like the Lady of Vladimir—Mary holds the infant Christ tenderly in her arms and inclines her head to receive a kiss from the infant, who reaches his hand to her neck. Another, a form of the pieta, the epitaphios threnos (lamentation upon the grave), depicts Mary cradling the head of the dead Christ who has just been removed from the cross. In the first, the joy and love of mother and son are palpable. Yet, in some versions, the virgin’s eyes are sad with the knowledge of the passion to come. In the second, Mary again holds the body of her beloved, now sacrificed and lifeless, but still in her arms. In the Lamenting Virigin, we encounter gesture again, the love and sad tenderness is there, but, in the place of the beloved Son there is emptiness. “Alone she saw to birth as now she has seen to the burial. She took and held the precious child and prepared the undefiled body for the grave.” But the arms are not just empty; the arms are perceptibly in motion, drawing the absent One closer to her breast.
I know no more powerful, no more achingly truthful depiction of the persisting experience of grief than this. All the gestures of love I had learned over the years are hollow after Linda’s death. Meant to surround her, to make my heart known to her, my arms now ache from the emptiness. The weight of such emptiness has no measure.
And yet, there is more to the message of this image. For it is the infant so tenderly held that gives the gesture its meaning. The virgin’s inclination, bearing, and being are shaped by the love in that gesture. Her love, even in her time of absence, is formed around her beloved, a love returned with equal tenderness and depth by the infant Christ. Likewise, although the absence of the infant, and of the dying Lord, can never be denied, the very shape of the virgin’s love makes the beloved almost visible.
Lady of Vladimir
Epitaphios Threnos
Day II
Day II: Dawn [Lauds]
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
—Rilke
Diary Entry: August 5, 2008—7:45 a.m.—Seattle
It is a new morning. I thank God for mornings. Night brings dark thoughts and weariness of soul. The new day brings with it a prospect of joy in life, perhaps for new possibilities, for a new way to walk these days with my darling. I truly hope so, because walking without her is deepest pain.
Linda and I kept this familiar prayer at our bedside:
This is another day, O Lord.
I know not what it will bring forth,
But make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be.
If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely.
If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly.
If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently.
And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly.
Make these words more than words . . .
—Book of Common Prayer
Day II: Daytime
Ungiven gifts pile about me.
Unsung songs remain
trapped in my throat.
Unsaid words lie rotting
in my mouth,
and I sit staring down
a lifetime of unlived days,
for