Grief Arrives in its Own Time

Florence called me today to tell me it's about time I updated my blog. Yes, it is about time. To say I've been busy is just one excuse that usually suffices, but I have also been sad. I realized these past few weeks that words sometimes can be utterly useless. My dear, dear friend Olivia lost her father unexpectedly, and, as I watched her suffer, watched my usually exuberant friend go silent and see the tears, seemingly without end, fall from her eyes, I suffered with her and for her - because the world had lost a great man and because I could do nothing to take her suffering away. I sat in vigil with her at the hospital, I prayed, but words were not her or my comfort that day.

As I was going through old issues of The Sun Magazine I came across this poem by Stuart Kestenbaum and I thought immediately of Olivia and her sister Maria, two wonderful women who are the product of their God-fearing, honorable parents.

It doesn't announce itself or knock

on the door of your heart. Suddenly

it's right behind you,

looking with great pity

at the back of your neck

and your shoulders on which

it spends days placing a burden

and lifting it. Grief arrives

in its own sweet time, sweet

because it lets you know that

you are alive, time because

what you are holding becomes

the only day there is: the sun stops

moving, the sky grows utterly quiet

and impossibly blue. Behind the blue

are the stars we can't see and beyond

the stars either dark or light,

both of which are endless.

To Olivia and Maria-

I promise one day the grief with subside. It will not entirely dissipate. You will always miss your father, but, at one point, the grief will not seem endless. I love you both very much.

Your Katya