A grief shared...

April Showers.

Springtime has sprung and with it comes a time of change and mixed emotions.

Ok, cut to the core, April was a shit month for so many of my friends. So what do I do? I turn to poetry my dear reader, a lyrical lettering of life and death. Larkin referred to Spring "as a kind of grief", we mourn what has gone and what is to come, when all around us is blooming we are very much stuck in our dark winter thoughts.

I feel we are still coming to terms with the new year somehow. Am I wrong? Is it me or are we going too fast? I had the good news that I am in the clear for the 4th year running so I should be very happy (and I am!) but after a mere 5 minutes my brain was running and racing to the next day, the next email, the next phone call. Should I stop and think more? Yes, I should. We all should.

And I have indeed been thinking. Like the shedding of autumn and the cold of winter my thoughts in April have turned to what my friends have lost. My friends who I love dearly and often rarely see. And new friends who I have never met yet feel close to.  Some have lost their jobs, some have lost life-changing moments, some have lost family, some have lost their beloved pets who were really family and others who have lost a part of life that will never come back. So many of them have lost. So many of them are grieving. And what is grief? Why do people say it will get better with time? What exactly is "time" to those who are lost and have lost? Nothing. Time is nothing. It may be a measure but really it is not. Time is what we want it to be. It is a Grief Shared and at the same moment it is the only gift we have. So we must take it, my friends, we must take it and use it and make it our own as it is, in itself, immeasurable and difficult and wonderful.

Like Larkin and his damn Trees, "Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.”

so do just that. Begin afresh, no matter how hard, how painful, how difficult. Begin afresh. Love and live! The Powerful Play goes on, and you may contribute a verse..(Whitman)

remember that x