Appointment with Love

I can still remember a Christmas eve , doesn’t seem that long ago…I was @ my grandparents, talking with my Uncle Bill.  I remember telling him I wished I had a girl friend…

There were absolutely no prospects on the horizon…none...nada…

He told me, you never know…that special someone might be just around the corner…

Would you believe I bumped into her less that two months later..

So my encouragement to you my fellow blog reader if that is your situation…

Don’t give up!~

The following story is for you

Sending you a Christmas Blessing.  DM

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      Six minutes to six, said the great round clock over the information booth in Grand Central Station.  The tall young Army lieutenant who had just come from the direction of the tracks lifted his sunburned face, and his eyes narrowed to note the exact time.  His heart was pounding with a beat that shocked him because he could not control it.  In six minutes, he would see the woman who had filled such a special place in his life for the past 13 months, the woman he had never seen, yet whose written words had been with him and sustained him unfailingly.

     He placed himself as close as he could to the information booth, just beyond the ring of people besieging the clerks…

      Lieutenant Blanford remembered one night in particular, the worst of the fighting, when his plane had been caught in the midst of a pack of Zeros.  He had seen the grinning face of one of the enemy pilots.

     In one of his letters, he had confessed to her that he often felt fear, and only a few days before this battle, he had received her answer: “Of course you fear…all brave men do.  Didn’t King David know fear?  That’s why he wrote the 23rd Psalm.  Next time you doubt yourself, I want you to hear my voice reciting to you, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”  And he had remembered;  he had heard her imagined voice, and it had renewed his strength and skill.

     Now he was going to hear her real voice.  Four minutes to six.  His face grew sharp. 

       Under the immense, starred roof, people were walking fast, like threads of color being woven into a grey web.  A girl passed close to him,  and Lieutenant Blanford started.  She was wearing a red flower in her suit lapel, but it was a crimson sweet pea, not the little red rose they had agreed upon.  Besides this girl was too young, about 18, whereas Hollis Meynell had frankly told him she was 30.  “Well, what of it?” he had answered.  “I’m 32.  He was 29.

     His mind went back to that book- the book the Lord Himself must have put into his hands out of the hundreds of Army  library books sent to the Florida training camp.  Of Human Bondage, it was; and throughout the book were notes in a woman’s writing.  He had always hated that writing-in habit, but these remarks were different.  He had never believed that a woman could see into a man’s heart so tenderly, so understandingly.  Her name was on the book-plate  Hollis Meynell.  He had got hold of a New York City telephone book and found her address.  He had written, she had answered.  Next day he had been shipped out, but they had gone on writing.

     For 13 months, she had faithfully replied, and more than replied.  When his letters did not arrive, she wrote anyway, and now he believed he loved her, and she loved him.

     But she had refused all his pleas to sent him a photograph.  That seemed rather bad, of course.  But she had explained: “If your feeling for me has any reality, any honest basis, what I look like won’t matter.  Suppose I’m beautiful.  I’d always be haunted by the feeling that you had been taking a chance on just that, and that kind of love would disgust me.  Suppose I’m plain (and you must admit that this is more likely) Then I’d always fear that you were going on writing me only because you were lonely and had no one else.  No, don’t ask for my picture.  When you come to New York, you shall see me and they you shall make your decision.  Remember, both of us are free to stop or go on after that- whichever we choose…”

      One minute to six- he pulled hard on the cigarette.

     Then Lieutenant Blanford’s heard leaped higher than his plane had ever done.

     A young woman was coming toward him.  Her figure was long and slim; her blond hair lay back in curls from her delicate ears.  Her eyes were blue and flowers, her lips and chin had a gentle firmness.  In her pale green suit, she was like springtime come alive.

     He started toward her, entirely forgetting to notice that she was wearing no rose, and as he moved, a small, provocative smile curved her lips.

      Going my way soldier?” she murmured.

      Uncontrollably, he made one step closer to her.  Then he saw Hollis Meynell.

      She was standing almost directly behind the girl, a woman well past 40, her greying hair tucked under a worn hat.  She was more than plump; her thick-ankled feet were thrust into low-heeled shoes.  But she wore a red rose in a rumpled lapel of her brown coat.

     The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away.

     Blanford felt that though he were being split in two, so keen was his desire to follow the girl, yet so deep was his longing for the woman whose spirit had truly companion-ed and upheld his own; and there she stood.  Her pale  plump face was gentle and sensible;  he could see that now.  Her gray eyes had a warm, kindly twinkle.

     Lieutenant Blanford did not hesitate.  His fingers gripped the small, worn, blue leather copy of Of Human Bondage, which was to identify him to her.  This would  not be love, but it would be something precious, something perhaps even rarer than love- a friendship for which he had been and must ever be grateful.

     He squared his broad shoulders, saluted and held the book out toward the woman, although even while he spoke, he felt shocked by the bitterness of his disappointment.

      “I”m lieutenant John Blanford, and you- you are Miss Meynell.  I’m so glad you could meet me.  May…..may I take you to dinner?”

      The woman’s face broadened into a tolerant smile.  “I don’t know what this is all about, son,” she answered.  “That young lady in the green suit- the one who just went by- begged me to wear this rose on my coat.  And she said that if you asked me to go out with you, I should tell you that she’s waiting for you in that big restaurant across the street.  She said it was some kind of a test.  I’ve got two boys with Uncle Sam myself, so I didn’t mind to oblige you.”  Sulamith Ish-Kishor

from A  3rd serving of Chicken Soup for the Soul.

Old Cheese

“Society is commonly too cheap.  We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other.  We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are……certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications…”

from his essay on solitude  Thoreau

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“I missed you” my wife told me this morning.

Music to my ears.

She just got back from spending 3 days with a good friend who is grieving the loss of her son.

Things have been a little tense (stale?) around here, lately so I chuckled and  and mumbled something about being “good fresh cheese/ and not stale musty cheese”

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There is a rhythm to relationships…

all relationships…

friendships,  family relationships, even Internet blogging relationships…

reminds me of  this verse from Ecclesiastes:  “There is a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing…”

I (had) a friend who used to stop by to chat.

He would stop by on  Sunday afternoons.

I noticed I started to get this knot/ uptight feeling in my gut Sunday afternoons.
I would feel a nap coming on, and  think….hummm, it’s been 3 or 4 weeks since my friend had last stopped…I wonder if today he’ll pop in….

These would not be 30 minute visits,  they would last for a couple of hours.

Things finally came to a head.

One Sunday, we were getting ready to leave for a birthday party…Wife and I were scurrying around, I still needed to shave…

This friend pulls into the driveway, I meet him at the door, he steps into the kitchen, I say to him...’Today’s probably not a good day for a visit…I need to get ready for a party,”

he replies…“Go ahead and get ready…”

he continues to stand there, looking like he has no intention of leaving….

It ticked me off.  Can’t remember what I said after that, but it took some additional coaxing for me to help him connect the dots, that now was not going to work, and he would have to leave…

We have another friend, whom we see  3 or 4 times a year….tops

We’ve been known to close down a Starbucks on more than one occasion…reminds me of those days when I would sit for hours engrossed in a deep conversation with someone on a Saturday night in a bar….it would feel like we were in a bubble, and the people  and noise all around us were not really there.

As I thought about this second friendship and the frequency of our getting together’s , I  said to the friend who had a hard time connecting the dots when it came time to leave

.“I  would prefer we just  together every 6 to 8 weeks..”

(My thought was, in this other friendship,  which I dearly enjoy, we can go 8 to 12 weeks between visits, then getting together only every 6 to 8 seems more balanced with the rest of my life)

He took it well enough I thought at the time…. I said maybe we could do a little more communicating via e-mail…

(side note : I have not seen or heard from him again, as of this writing it’s been about 30 weeks.. ..I’ve called, e-mailed and sent him a note, oh well, )

What I was experiencing in this relationship is not uncommon…. it is part of being human.

When the knot in my stomach would start and I would have these thoughts about   not being a “good friend”. this verse would pop into my head:

“Let your foot be seldom in your neighbor’s house, lest he have his fill of you and hate you.”                           from the  book of Proverbs 25:17

yep, that pretty much summed up what I was feeling…

(boy am I on a roll this week..two verses in one blog post )

So here’s to all of us who enjoy  interacting with people…

Sometimes less is better.

Even in the world of cheese…it’s all about timing.

ps if you’re ever looking for a gift ideas for me… I love swiss cheese DM

It started with a look

“So who do you think are some of the hot girls in your class?” I remember asking my brother Steve one night as we were going to bed.  He was 13 and I was 14.

We never talked about that sort of thing but for some reason that night, we did.

One of the girls in his class that especially caught my eye was  the doctor’s daughter.   Long dark hair, cute smile.  friendly…

whoa…….

Yep, he agreed, she definitely needed to be on the   a ” hottie” list 

But since she was a year younger than I, and I was  shy,  (I would get tongue tied any time I found myself in the presence of a pretty girl,)

the odds of me going out on a date were slim to none.

Flash forward 2 years.

Our highschool combined the 9th through 12 grade classes into adviser groups for morning attendance.  Imagine my rush of excitement  when I realized  I’d been assigned the same group as that girl who had caught my eye as far back as 6th grade..    She didn’t have a clue as to my feelings because I couldn’t for the life of me, begin to have a simple conversation with her.

One day in study hall, that girl and her friend Mary were working on their Spanish home work.  The three of us were sitting at a round table together and one of them asked me a question…  heart beating wildly in my chest, I said something.  I’d actually had a short conversation with not one, but two pretty girls

Over the next several days I relived that  moment again and again.

I was coming upon my 16th birthday.

I   was locked  in a life and death internal battle with  a monster….

Fear

A Fear Monster

Ever hear of one of those?  Me neither

You’ll have to take my word for it, they are just as real, even though they are invisible to the naked eye.

If you ever have the misfortune to be inhabited by one, you’ll know it.

He ruled my inner world …  merciless.

The Monster of fear that ruled my life into adulthood.

I was trapped between this monster and the thought that unless I somehow escaped his grip I would spend the rest of my life single and alone….

and I didn’t want to be alone.. 

This monster guarded the door to the cave in which I lived….

and the only way out was past him.

I devised a plan.

I would call this young lady up on the phone.

Ask her if she would like to go on  a date?

a movie…

Summoning up the nerve to make that phone call took a  few days.

I can still remember the shaking of my fingers as I dialed her number….

She was home,  we talked.  Said she would go to the movie with me.

Went to the movie…

had a nice time.  Took her  home.

The next Monday at school, she came up behind me in the lunch line.

I panicked.  The Fear monster was still calling the shots.

I looked @ this girl of my dreams, mumbled something, excused myself and walked out the door of the lunch room.

She had no idea what had just happened, and wouldn’t know until years later.

We didn’t talk for the next 5 years.

I’d see her cruising around with different guys and kick myself.

After I graduated high school, my buddy Chuck and I stopped by a little pizza joint…This same girl waited on our table.

Chuck knew about my panic attack with her back in the day. Jokingly he says to me…“If you don’t ask her out, I will.”

and the rest is history….

Thirty three years, and four beautiful children later,

she is still my wife and best friend….

Today is Father’s Day 2012.

I’ve told this story before.

If you’re someone who get’s tongue tied when you’re in the presence of the opposite sex, I get it.

I totally get it.

I’ll let you in on a little secret.  Some girls find that very attractive. ( and there are nice guys who find a shy girl attractive as well)

Find a friend,  get some counseling…don’t give up.

It is possible to escape the cave ruled by the Monster of Fear.

I’m living proof.

If you need help getting out, drop me a line.

I will do everything in my power to get you out.

I know I could decieve her…

…”A few years ago I had been away from home for many weeks on a long trip and had been with people constantly.  I was desperate3 to get away from people for a while.  So when I got on the plane I sat in an aisle seat.  The middle seat was vacant and the window seat was occupied by a young woman.  As we waited for the plane to take off,  I retreated as deeply as possible into a book I was carrying.  It was purely an anti-social maneuver.  But my traveling companion wanted to talk.  She asked, ” What are you reading?”

“A book,” I replied.

“What is the name of it?” she asked.

“Psycho-cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz,” I said.

“Do you study psychology?”

“No”

Everything was monosyllables.  By then the engines were running and we were beginning to taxi down the runway.  She kept at it.  I had a head cold and could hardly hear.  Finally, I closed the book and moved to the vacant seat between us, and we began to converse.

I soon realized what she really had in mind was to find a companion.  Going straight to the point, I said, ” I travel a lot and many times I am lonely.  I often encounter temptations to be unfaithful to my wife.  But I’ve decided it’s not worth it.  I know I could deceive her, but the basis of our relationship is our mutual love and confidence.  She trusts me, and I trust her.

I’ve lived long enough to realize that meaning in life is not found in seeing what I can get away with, or in bigger achievements, or in a position, or in how my leisure time is spent.  I’ve learned that meaning is found in relationships.  Consequently, I don’t intend to destroy the best relationship I have.  If I came home having been unfaithful to my wife, even though she might not perceive it, and even though I could keep it from her, I’d know.  She would come to me with her blind confidence and I’d have to somehow create a distance between us.  We’d be pulled apart and she would never know why.  Soon we would be strangers living together under the same roof.”

The ones who would pay most heavily would be my wife and children.  That strikes me as the height of selfishness.”

She was dumbfounded!~

Then she began to open up.  She said, “I”m twenty-four years old.  I ought to be getting married, but all my married friends have affairs and if that’s the way it is, I don’t want it.  When my friends go away for the weekend, their husbands are soon knocking at my door.  They are like little boys.  I just don’t think I could handle it if my husband were like that.”

Then she added, “I’ve never heard ideas like yours.  Where do they come from?”

“You’d laugh if I told you.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” she said.

“I got them from the Bible,” I said.  I went on to explain to her what the Christian message is and how it changes a person so he can get his life in order.  By then we were about to land.  What frustration!  We were in the middle of my explanation.  She was intensely interested in every word, but we had to quit.

As the passengers moved into the aisle, I let her go on ahead.  When I came off a bit later and walked up the concourse, I passed her standing with a circle of about ten of her friends who had come to meet her.  They were the ones she had told me about on the plane.  She stopped me and made the rounds of introductions.  I stood there for at least ten minutes while she related our conversation to them. …

excerpt from a book by Jim Peterson

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I (DM) have been chewing on this book the past couple of days.

What does  trust look like in  a marriage relationship?

Integrity…

Who am I when no one is looking?

Priorities….What are the most important things  in my life?

Temptations…

Internet relationships…

Blogging relationships and the process of thinning

We have 80  different apple trees on our property.

They are a sight to behold when they are all laden with fruit….

These are pictures from 2009 and 2010:

Ginger gold

Red Delicious

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I was out in the orchard today checking on the 2012 crop.

Noticed they are about ready to go through their thinning process :

I took this picture this afternoon.

If you look really closely, there are larger apples as well as little tiny ones.

Just to give you an idea, the larger ones are about the size of a quarter…the smaller apples will drop off in the next week or two so that the tree will pour it’s energy into the apples that remain.

I’ve been blogging since 2007.

Hard to believe.

Noticed on my counter this morning there have been over 300,000 hits, whatever that means

During this time my wife and I have become friends with people literally from around the globe.

I’ve met 4 of you in person, in some cases more than once.

A handful of you are also friends on face book, so that has added another dimension to our interactions.

I have been very intentional from the very beginning to include my wife in all of my interactions on line.   We share the same e-mail address, same Face book account, etc.  Most of us have heard accounts of people running off with someone they “met” on line.  Unfortunately  that sort of thing happens in a broken world.

and I don’t want it to ever  happen to me….

If you think it could never happen to you, then the slide has already been greased.

Every so often, I will meet another blogger and really “click”…a genuine friendship will begins to form… (like an apple) but then one day, when I log on to visit their blog… poof..they are gone,  no notice..just gone….like those small apples that will fall off during thinning.

Even though I know it’s a natural and healthy process, it leaves  me a little sad….

That happened again this week.

Blogging friend dropped off the radar.

I was tempted to feel like Puff the Magic Dragon..

Remember the song?

the little boy sudden stops coming to visit…

Fortunately for me,

I am surrounded by several loving nurturing relationships…..both on-line as well as in person.

I thought about the apple tree  and its ability to only grow so many apples in a season…

There’s a reason for that.

Even those of us that tend to be more social than others can only maintain and invest in a limited number of relationships.

I used to think there was no limit to the number of friendships I could stay current with.

Not any more

Those of us that blog, blog for different reasons….

If you’re a blogger, why do you blog?

If you’re not a blogger but enjoy reading blog posts..what do you get out of it?

Is it possible to have genuine friendships with people and never meet them in person?

Do you have any friendships that started on line and matured into something significant in your life?

DM

Grandpa you were wrong

Don’t

Surrender

Your loneliness so quickly.

Let it cut more

Deep.

Let it ferment and season you

As few human

Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight

Has made my eyes so soft,

My voice so

Tender….

from the poem “My Eyes So Soft”  by Hafiz

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For years I’ve  been intrigued by the issue of loneliness.

I’m very relational, and on those occasions where the winds of loneliness did  blow through my soul I HATED  it.

Yes, even when you’re in a great marriage, on occasion a person still can experience the angst of loneliness.

On the morning of my wedding I stopped by my grandpa’s house after I got my hair cut to say “Hi”

He’d been married for over 50 years by this time.

We talked about marriage.

 He told me : “After three months,  it’s all work”

He gave me the impression, the romantic feelings I was feeling were not going to last.

That was 33 years ago this weekend.

4 children later….

We still like to hold hands,

Read to each other

and  are very much in love

Mrs DM is taking off on a trip to help out with the grand kids tomorrow.

She’ll be gone for 5 days.

I miss her already.

If you’ve been a reader of my blog for very long, you know I’m a big U2 fan…

Some couples have a song that captures their relationship…

here’s ours….

The picture below was taken on our 25th anniversary.

We still look pretty much the same today.  Mrs. DM’s hair is a little more gray and mine,

well, I don’t have  as much.

Still rock’n after 33 years.

Friendships in the Blogging world

Blogging brings with it the temptation and false illusion of deep friendships.

Last night I was thinking about the many, many people I’ve had the opportunity to get to know   via my wordpress blog since  2007

I’ve observed a pattern.

most  eventually drift away…not all of them, but most.

It is actually a good thing.

Apple trees do the same thing every summer.  (we have a small orchard)

The tree start out with hundreds of newly pollinated apples in late May, but by early June, many have fallen to the ground.  The remaining apples  will then  have the nourishment and energy they require to mature.

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The following is a portion of an essay on friendships by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

      “Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen.”

     Bashfulness and apathy are a tough husk, in which a delicate organization is protected from premature ripening. It would be lost if it knew itself before any of the best souls were yet ripe enough to know and own it.

Respect the naturlangsamkeit which hardens the ruby in a million years, and works in duration.”

Naturlangsamkeit: a German word for a slow process of ripening.

(In other words, friendships take time to ripen…you can’t really hurry the process….)

      “There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why either should be first named. One is Truth. A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness .”

       “We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man, who, ….. cast off this drapery, and, omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting, as indeed he could not help doing, for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms…… But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plain-dealing. 

     “The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity (Magnanimous: generous in forgiving) and trust”.

  “I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest thing we know.”

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I’ve had the  privilege to meet (4)  of you  fellow bloggers  in person since 2008.   Felt like I was meeting a long lost sibling each time…which tells me that the process of  “Naturlangsamkeit” was in fact taking place….

      It is possible to build healthy friendships via your blog.

And finally, I posted  this on facebook last night:

       There is magic in long-distance friendships. They let you relate to other human beings in a way that goes beyond being physically together and is often more profound. ~Diana Cortes

No turning back

         

When  I logged onto Facebook this morning, I found myself scrolling down the friends of a friend…..people we used to attend a local church with.   

        It stirred up this feeling of being on the outside looking in….

        I felt like a little boy standing outside a store window @ Christmas time, with my nose pressed against the glass, watching  people shop.

     If you sense a hint of  bitterness toward that church  (small c) or the people in it, you would be wrong.    I’m not. 

      What I was (and still am) turned off by, is the  spiritual climate, the spiritual apathy,  served  there on a week to week basis…. 

 A.W. Tozer  puts it like this :

      “There is today no lack of Bible teachers to set forth correctly the principles of the doctrines of Christ, but too many  of these seem satisfied to teach the fundamentals of the faith year after year, strangely unaware there is in there ministry no manifest Presence, nor anything unusual in their personal lives.  They minister constantly to believers who feel within their breasts a longing  which their teaching simply does not satisfy.

      I trust I  speak in charity, but the lack in our pulpits is real.  Milton’s terrible sentence applies to our day as accurately as it did to his:  “the hungry sheep look up and are not fed.”  It is a solemn thing, and no small scandal in the  Kingdom, to see God’s children starving while actually seated at the Father’s table….” 

     It all started in 1998 my wife asked me a  few harmless questions (or so I thought)…

     “Where have you felt the most  refreshed spiritually?

     ”Think of the times when you  were most encouraged spiritually?  “

       I remember saying things like…

“At that  lay ministry  weekend retreat back in 1981.”

 ”Not always but on occasion in a small group get together.”

“That “body life service “we used to attend in New Jersey @ Gilgal.”

“Sometimes  AFTER  church when we are hanging around catching up with Leslie, or Lance, or Thomas…..” 

  Then we  tried to identify what was it about those times that made them stand out?

 Having a  genuine sense of connectedness both to people and to God.

 Masks were down.

 people  really listening to where each other was at.

 God’s word was talked about as it practically applied in our current situation.

  Then she asked: “How can we get more of that  in our lives?”

      and the rest is history

At  this point, we are part of a  small house church. 

As much as I miss those people we used to attend church (small c) with, I would never go back.

      I have no idea who might @ some point read this…but just so you know….

      I’ve spent years…literally years  in three  different local churches thinking we  could/ should  ”reform” them  from the inside out.   

      Finally came to the realization  that the pastor and leadership in a  local church casts a long, long shadow spiritually. 

        I only have one life to live…  Do I spend it settling for second best just so I have lots of friends or is there a point where I  ”take the road less traveled”?

     If   you get a chance, pick up a copy of John Fischer’s Dark Horse.

The Woman

      She flicked the porch  light of her trailer for me on Friday.

    

            As if to say  ”  See- I told you I know your truck“

            I think her name is Mary.  She’s a widow.  

           Mary  and her husband farmed  for fifty years- she milked and  he  hung out at the tavern.

         Mary and I  sat across the table from each other this Fall at a reception.  We talked for 20 minutes.  I was struck by the twinkle in her eye.    We talked about flowers,   her new trailer, what cookies  she liked to bake.  She  told me she sees  my brother drive by  her place  all the time-  She’d even seen me a time or two the past month.

   I thought to myself- ” Now  come on.    I drive by  your place 60 miles an hour-  first thing in the morning,   You would have to be looking because your trailer  sits at the bottom of a  hill,  I only go by  your  place   once in a while and you’re telling me you’ve seen me??? “

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Forlorn Lifescapes

Loneliness chills
its canvas frozen into
daunting forlorn lifescapes:

A widow
counting hours by her desolation
hands outstretched achingly
in tortuous dreams
to embrace icy emptiness
her bed fellow

Abandoned parents
languishing listlessly
sepulchral rooms echoing
their aging heartbeats
fun-filled memories brimming
soulful eyes
silent tears
companions of their fading years

Traumatized sons and daughters
of estranged spouses
befuddled teenagers
measuring life by shattered dreams
misty-eyed seniors
surveying dim vistas
bleak platitudes their sole comfort
on cold park benches

Friendless, splintered,
emotionally bankrupt hearts
yearning for that one touch of love
a warm hug, a healing caress
a smile of acceptance
a gentle word
a ray of hope or
but a nod of recognition

Instead
we relegate them
to the callous fringes of our lives
we look without seeing them
we listen without hearing them
we rush by them
heedless, apathetic, selfish
enmeshed in sequestered webs
of futile values
unmindful that such acidic neglect
could etch the fabric
of our very own tomorrows
with the selfsame hollowness  

– Shernaz Wadia
September 25, 2005

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Good Grief, That was 13 years ago

     

 

          I came across  the  picture Sunday night.  Facebook mentioned one of my friends had been tagged in a photo.

          Some of you talk about “triggers,” well, this photo  triggered something.  It  triggered  a heaviness  that was  almost palatable.

      Today at work,  that photo  and the accompanying  heaviness  came back to my mind several times.

     I didn’t understand.     I didn’t even know 1/2 of the people in the photo,  the ones I did  were  smiling.

       and then it hit me….

     I was  grieving

       Grief.  

      The picture triggered a wave of  grief that is 13 years old.   

     I didn’t think grief was supposed to last   that long.

           A good friend of mine is  still grieving the loss of a child, 4 years later.   He recently compared his   grief to  waves on the ocean.  
     Initially the waves  were strong, one after another… Four years later, they’re  further apart.

   

      Have you experienced grief in your life?  As I’ve alluded to, grief can come into our lives for lots of different reasons.

     If  you have experienced grief  and feel comfortable, would you tell me about it?  I suspect this post will generate a lot of hits long term.   What sort of comfort, insight, hope, wisdom would you give the person who stumbles across this later.  Please don’t give any pat  answers on this one.  I’m not interested in  theory.  Speak only of what you’ve experienced first hand.  Thank you in advance. DM