Gifts Beyond Death's Reach
An Unfolding - Part 4
The week after my mother suddenly and unexpectedly died, we tried to celebrate Christmas.
Crying I: Having Forgotten How
I went from crying not at all to tears
That flow like cold Northwestern autumn rain
I rediscovered in an instant, years
Of pent up grief and sadness aches and pains
I cried until my tears were gone to waste
We bore the grief together over weeks
The Christmas spirit crushed and poison-laced
Gifts given and received beyond death’s reach
Rough nights did burn the stinging tears in eye
The twilight sings her songs and keeps us down
Admit I must that she who made me died
To start the journey through this tear-soaked ground
As family we united in goodbye;
It took her death to teach me how to cry.
- N.C-J, 2024The family, smaller now, spent that Christmas opening the gifts she got us and not knowing what to do with the ones we got her. The poem represents the beginning of my emotional journey; learning how to properly be Sad. I thought I knew how, but I did not. Being melancholy, depressed, and perpetually down did not prepare me for the real grief and sadness of death and loss. In fact, it served me poorly (a story for another time). Since December 2019 I have been learning what it really means to participate in the full range of human emotions — wandering, often lost through these new Frontiers. I am not good at it yet, as you will see.
This blog is not only a place where I want to get my work out there in the world to be read and enjoyed in general, but also in hope that it might be an example for men on what it means to live an emotionally honest life. In today’s Frontier expedition we are in the Bay of Despair (stay tuned for anger!).
This is an in-progress series of poems entitled ‘Crying’. Cleverly, they are about every time I’ve “for real cried” in my life. A manly tear leaking out or choked back during Saving Private Ryan or Gladiator doesn’t count. Note that these aren’t instructionals for any sort of emotional behaviour or expectations to strive for, but rather are a demonstration of honesty with myself (and now you) about what it meant to experience deep sorrow.
The story of this second poem takes place only a week or so after the first one.
Crying II: Between Friends
A walk between two friends should be a joy
So often we had done this in the past
To talk, to laugh, recalling times gone by
I think back now as they fade mem’ry’s grasp
My mother dies in sudden circumstance
Sobs wrack my body and I fall to feel
A shame which is not given half a chance
To wound as brothers carry me to heal
I’ll not forget the open way I wept
And won’t dismiss the strength they gave to me
In all my days they’ll be in honour kept
My boys and girls will know how friends should be
I test the bound’ries of fraternal bonds
And find the ties that bind together strong
- N.C-J, 2024Two dear old friends witnessed me at my lowest moment of grief, and the brotherhood I had with them allowed me to fully experience that grief without self-consciousness. Some folks might’ve retreated at such raw displays of ‘over’-emotional expression, but not those two.
I’ve realized that this is a rare thing not everyone gets to experience. I wanted to capture that moment and the feelings around it, but also the immeasurable goodness to be gained from great friends. Like I said, these poems aren’t advice or instructions, but if I were to give some, it would be to find/make good friends. Invest in people, put yourself out there, and there is gold to be found.
Thanks for reading. See you next week.
Thanks, brother.
The poems are very well done - if that's not gauche to say, given what they're about.
I am glad to read that, and glad that you shared them.
I remember that walk- an honour to be there, and to be friends and brothers.
"And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it."
- CS Lewis, the Inner Ring
So beautiful, Nick. I also feel like the first time I truly cried was when I lost my mum. Now that I think about it, it also felt like my eyes were opening for the first time. Thanks for sharing—I love this.