Those Thoughts That Abide and Never Seem To Leave

Waking and cuddling and going back to sleep,

This continual state; the mind’s mindfulness,

In such a reality these thoughts continually reap,

A grief ever real; for that we can confess.

Thoughts that abide and never seem to leave,

Designate this place as one estranged to delight,

God with us, this Jesus, and together we grieve,

Our challenge is to journey and to resist taking flight.

Funny, though, this encounter with never leaving thought,

A refrain of understanding; an indelibly settled seed,

It compounds the need of connection; that to be sought,

For the love of loving others is what we will need.

***

Grief is the state of the mind’s continual mindfulness of a matter; one that doesn’t readily leave. The only real quantifier is where pain registers on the dial. For some grief, the pain is irrepressible. Some grief is insurmountable. This is not that type of grief, but it is ambiguous at this stage.

There is a certain safe reliability to one’s thoughts in grief, notwithstanding the undesirable nature of those thoughts. But it is a predictability that we can manage, particularly in the company of family and friends.

We don’t want the matter to ever be off the agenda. We also don’t want to talk about it incessantly. We have only discovered the need for humour to break grief’s monotony – the movie, Date Night, has been comic relief for us more than once in these days.

Of such value are the loving embraces we have given each other. Most are just physically communicative. There are some tears, but tears they are of safe resignation – we know what we know and that is all. God holds us at this point – safe in the acceptance of this specific knowledge set.

Connection is not to be underestimated. In grief such connection is crucial. I have become the communications coordinator and my wife, she is the hostel manager. But together we meet with the town’s people, whilst the hostel is under the loving and competent care of those in the know.

The mind’s mindfulness is an interesting mental and emotional phenomenon. A continual state of accommodating knowledge that never changes, the mind is a safe place if we can bear its pain. Personally, this is not hard, and my observations of my wife are similar.

We do not journey alone. There is one who goes with us in this; in us and between us. He is Jesus. And we are assured that life ends well, no matter what takes place in these tremulous moments.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.