He has given you his love light to carry.
—Wendy Videlock
It is the work of the living
to grieve the dead.
It is our work to wake each day,
to live into the world that is.
It is our work to weep,
and it is our work to be healed.
Some part of us knows
not only the absence of our beloveds,
but also their presence,
how they continue to teach us,
how they invite us to grow.
It is our work to be softened by loss,
to be undone, destroyed, remade.
Wounded, we recoil,
and it is our work to notice how,
like crushed and trampled grass,
we spring back.
It is our work to meet death again
and again and again,
and though it aches to be open,
it is our work to be opened,
to live into the opening
until we know ourselves
as blossoms nourished from within
by the radiance of the ones
who are no longer physically here.
They have given us their love light to carry.
It is our work to be in service to that light.
*For those of you who have been with the blog a long time, you may recall this poem in an earlier form from about five years ago … The first few line are the same, and the “it is our work” is the same, but it’s been fundamentally changed as my understanding of “our work” is ever evolving. I read it today at the memorial of a beloved member of the Telluride community, Clint Viebrock. For any who have loved someone and lost them, this poem is for you.
