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dreamprayact

~ Reflections of a preacher, poet, and contemplative activist

dreamprayact

Tag Archives: death

The sting of death

26 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Reflections

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

death, end of life, grief, life after loss, one flesh, woundedness

Tomorrow will be one month since Dal died. In all of our nineteen years together we were never apart for more than two weeks. This is our longest separation and it’s only going to grow longer. I cannot make sense of it. I appear to be alive – I’m breathing by some miracle, I’m seeing friends and talking to people, I’m walking the dog, I’m eating occasionally, although I’ve lost twenty pounds – yet I don’t feel very alive. Contrary to the Bible, death does in fact sting! Not only does it sting, but it renders the one left behind feeling mortally wounded.

Dal and I talked about the end of life sometimes, and we always agreed that we needed to go out together because neither of us could imagine life without the other. We understood the foolishness of this thinking, of course; nonetheless, it was our way of naming how deeply connected we felt to one another, as though we were one flesh. Indeed, we were, and that flesh has been torn asunder.

The reality is, as I sit here in this home we created together, as I contemplate this life we built together, as I recall the future we dreamt of together, it all keeps coming back to this – I don’t know how to live in this world without her, not really. I can’t see the way forward. I can’t imagine ever feeling whole again. Often, I’m not even sure I have the desire to live. What’s the point? This is not me being suicidal. It’s me plumbing the depths of my grief where my desire to live lies beaten and bloodied, struggling to get back up. 

The only thing to do

18 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Reflections

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

death, devotion, grief, loss, sorrow

There is no adequate consolation right now
There is no this is going to get better
There is no lessening of the sorrow
I cannot see the path forward
Only darkness, nothingness
I see no future
No home for me
Not without my beloved
Though I am told there is one

I am also told she lives now in my heart
Or that she lives on in the memories we made
Or that she will always be with me in spirit
None of which is enough right now
I want her
Her body, her mind, her sprightly spirit
Only her presence soothes me
Only she gives a day meaning beyond itself

Being a partner with her in life meant everything
She was my safe harbor in the storm
She knew me better than anyone ever has
She loved me fiercely in spite of my shortcomings
She was protective of me and of our love
She spoke so endearingly to me and about me
In the absence of these, who am I

Most of all she made my heart sing
Especially watching her love this life
A life we were creating together
And seeing her revel in genuine friendships
And laughing with such ease
And appreciating the small gifts hidden within each day
And hearing her tender words to me
And tasting her sweet lips
And feeling her body next to mine
There is no consolation for losing these things
There is no adequate measure to the loss I feel

In the meantime,
I will get up in the mornings as best I can
I will look for life wherever I can find it
If only for you, sweetheart
I will remember our devotion to one another
I will not lose sight of how deeply you loved me
I will grieve, and then grieve some more
It is the only thing to do
It is the only thing
You, Dally, make my heart sing
Though for now the song is awash in tears

~ Mark Lloyd Richardson

A letter to my love

11 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Reflections

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

death, dying, grief, love, marriage, peace

Dallis & I on the Big Island November 2014
(Photo: Wendy Granger)

My dear Dallis,

Sweetheart, I know I told you as you were dying that everything would be okay … that I would be okay … but it was a lie. I don’t like lying to you and I didn’t intend to do so; I was just trying to convince myself, and I was telling you what I thought you needed to hear so that you could let go and be released from a body that was failing you. But now I am utterly heartbroken. I feel completely lost without you. I want so badly to hear your voice again. I want to kiss your lips. I want to hold you and be held by you.

What touched my life so thoroughly during our love affair and marriage is how you would look at me with such affection in your eyes it melted my heart. You brought me to tears so many times just by being honest with me about how you felt. We told each other our deepest truths. We relied on one another to always care most about the other. 

I can’t believe how lucky I was to have you in my life for nineteen years. If I had known sooner that our time together was nearing the end, I would have stopped working earlier and devoted all my time to you … to us! I would have reveled all the more in your smile and laugh. I would have asked you to tell me more about the greatest joys of your life, all the way back. I would have wanted to watch your New Zealand slides with you, and have you regale me about that favorite adventure of yours, years before we met.

I would also have wanted to hear more about the places of pain and disappointment in your life, many of which I know about and others I imagine were left unsaid.

This grief hurts beyond imagining. I feel like I’m dying inside. I struggle just to do the simplest things and get through each day.

I wish there was a way to communicate with you, my beloved. I write these thoughts I’ve been thinking and wish I could get this message to you. You were the very one I needed in my life. You cheered my successes, savored our relationship, and gave me every bit of yourself to love and enjoy. You were my anchor, my safe haven, my source of lightheartedness and joy. 

I’m trying to figure out how to live without you near to me, your physical presence that is. I have never been through more painful days than these. A heavy sadness follows me everywhere, even to sleep. Nothing in my life experience compares to this aching I feel in body, mind and spirit.

Dallis, my beautiful one, it is my deepest hope that you are where there is no more pain and no more crying, and where you know deep and abiding peace. I also hope to see you often in my dreams.

You will always have my love,

Mark

Ashes

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Poems, Reflections

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Ash Wednesday, Confession, death, Lent, new creation, reconciliation, salvation, spiritual wholeness

ash
Ashes
earthy gray
dry as parched wilderness
symbol that we too shall perish

Dust to dust
ashes to ashes
each of us makes our humble return
back to the habitat of our origins

All that is false is allowed to die –
misguided allegiances
harmful compulsions
lingering resentments
ego-driven agendas –
dead on the ash heap of confession

Only then is there a new beginning
a reconciling
a turning toward wholeness
a desiring for God

Finally in the fullness of time
the desert blooms again
salvation comes
life triumphing over death.

Words (c) Mark Lloyd Richardson, 2015

On the sabbath they rested

07 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Reflections

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Christ's passion, death, grief, Holy Week, peace, redemption, sabbath

The Gospel of Luke tells us that after the crucifixion of Jesus a good and righteous man named Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate to ask for Jesus’ body. Joseph then took the body of Jesus down from the cross, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid. The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee and had watched the crucifixion from a distance, followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how Jesus’ body was laid. However, because the sabbath was beginning, they returned to where they were staying and prepared spices and ointments for later.

Then the text reads, “On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment” (Luke 23:56b).

I find myself wondering what that sabbath felt like to those who loved Jesus and had witnessed his cruel death.

What are the emotions you and I feel as we hear the story of Christ’s Passion told again during this Holy Week?

What do we do with ourselves following Jesus’ death?

Where do we find “rest” on the sabbath?

Here is a poem I wrote touching on these questions.

On the sabbath they rested

The room where lost dreamers came
in search of repair and a promised peace
looked like any other ancient room,
windows open and chanting to the sky,
walls thick with the prejudice of time,
echoing the desolation of unwelcome grief.

An ageless question hung in the air –
What awaits us between hopefulness and uncertainty?

We cannot know.

So for now we lie down among broken bodies,
we take our rest beside other ragged souls
who rummage around for redemption,
who long for peace in a world at war with itself.

Words (c) 2012 Mark Lloyd Richardson
Photo (c) 2012 Dallis Day Richardson 

The First Heart to Break

06 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Reflections

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

church, consolation, cross, death, faith, Good Friday, grief, Lent, prayers

 

Several years ago, following the tragic death of her fifteen year old son, our Christian Education Director took a leave of absence and spent her time taking long walks with her husband, caring for their daughter, going to the ocean their son so loved, and allowing her grief to unfold.

The season of Lent arrived and she put her hand to creating art. She used scrap pieces of wood in various shapes and sizes and fashioned them into three mosaic crosses. They were of simple design, about two feet high, and set side by side they formed a Lenten display.

On Good Friday she brought them to the church and set them up draped with black cloth, and on the Saturday before Easter came back to transform the crosses with gold and white fabrics symbolizing the resurrection.

During Lent and Easter that year her art was her primary connection with the church and her expression of what little faith she felt she had left. She was unable to come back to work or worship for months, because her grief was too raw.

The crosses remained on display through the fifty days of Easter and as Pentecost approached she said to me, “I think I have an idea for transforming the crosses into a Pentecost symbol.”

So she took the crosses home, and when she brought them back, she set them up on a table covered with fabrics of rich gold, red and earth tones. A light shone through dark openings within each cross and a fan blew on the fabric to create movement.

The whole project from beginning to end felt like it was important to her grief work and her struggle with God, that she needed the safety of symbolically expressing to God her deep pain and sense of loss – not that she hadn’t had those conversations elsewhere, but this was on God’s turf. Her art seemed to say, “Look at the darkness that attends my life now through the loss of my son.”

It is significant that she chose crosses – the instrument of death that took the life of God’s own beloved Son – as the focal point. Maybe this choice was her acknowledgment that God knows sorrow. I do not know. I am not an art critic. I am a lover of God and a lover of people, and while some were made uncomfortable by her art, I did the only thing I could think of to do – I encouraged her to keep on creating, to let her soul speak through her art, to offer her prayers through these physical materials and the work of her hands when words would not easily come.

William Sloane Coffin preached a sermon to his congregation at Riverside Church in New York City ten days after his own son’s untimely death. It was a eulogy for his son Alex, who died in a car accident at the age of twenty-four. His words ring true because he was a father whose son beat him to the grave. He claimed, “the one thing that should never be said when someone dies is, ‘It is the will of God.’ Never do we know enough to say that. My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”

Words (c) 2012 Mark Lloyd Richardson

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