Mourning Meditation: Verbs
Living, Losing, Loving

I set out to find myself a hero and found instead a calm inlet of words, protected by Loving that transcends losing and fosters living. Or maybe I just like to paddle around in other people’s ponds.

A hauntingly apt illustration from a novel about a delightfully prickly woman:

[T]he wounds closed up and scarred over, but only in that way that an oak struck by lightning heals itself by twisting and bending around the wound: it is still recognizably a tree, it still lives as a tree, it still puts out its leaves and acorns, but its center, hidden deep within the curtain of green, remains empty and splintered where it hasn't been grotesquely scarred over. We are happy the tree hasn't died, and from the proper angle we can look on it and suppose that it is the same tree as it ever was, but it is not and never will be.
(Robert Hicks, from The Widow of the South)


You take in nutrition, walk a million miles, nod and smile. People care, and feel, and regret; and in the end, turn awkwardly, silently away, vulnerable and shy. Words, like swords and phalluses, can shape destiny. Or become flaccid.

They had all seen nothing, Hugh knew, only grief’s gestures, sorrow’s affectations: True grief, he saw with the last glimpse of his son in the oak-paneled room, was a secret that defied divulging.
(Brett Lott, from Reed’s Beach)

And yet, losing is universal. Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain, he of the acerbic, winsome wit, poignantly shares his pain in a letter to his friend, the Rev. Joseph Twitchell (Congregationalist pastor), a few months after Twain’s 24 year old daughter died from meningitis. I rather relish the connection with a writer I admire, a man of profound, questioning spirit, who sought solace, as I do, in the arms of a human shepherd; we need human hands on the crook that drags us back from the abyss.[i]

Do I want you to write to me? Indeed I do…. The others break my heart but you will not. You have a something divine in you that is not in other men. You have the touch that heals, not lacerates. And you know the secret places of our hearts. You know our life—the outside of it—as the others do—and the inside of it—which they do not. You have seen our whole voyage. You have seen us go to sea, a cloud of sail, and the flag at the peak. And you see us now, chartless, adrift—derelicts, battered, water-logged, our sails a ruck of rags, our pride gone. For it is gone. And there is nothing in its place. The vanity of life was all we had, and there is no more vanity left in us. We are even ashamed of that we had, ashamed that we trusted the promises of life and builded high—to come to this!

… I did not know what she was. To me she was but treasure in the bank, the amount known, the need to look at it daily, handle it, weigh, it, count it, realize it, not necessary. And now that I would do it, it is too late. They tell me it is not there, has vanished away in a night, the bank is broken, my fortune is gone, I am a pauper. How am I to comprehend this? How am I to have it? Why am I robbed, and who is benefited?
(Mark Twain, The Selected Letters)

The living, the losing, the loving—shot through with murky, indistinct, creepy shadows—pile on one another until the borders blur. In this villanelle, among the more stylized of verse forms, I fancy that Elizabeth Bishop attempts to reel in the unruly children—Living, Losing, and Loving—disciplining them with careful rigor:

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones, And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (write it!) like disaster.

(qtd. in Cheryl Walker, God and Elizabeth Bishop: Meditations on Religion and Poetry, 2005)

A hero? Maybe I’ll settle for a life jacket.

Lord, how are they increased that trouble me!
Many are they that rise up against me.
Many there be which say of my soul, “There is no help for him in God.”

But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me;
my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.
I cried unto the Lord with my voice,
and he heard me out of his holy hill.

I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me.
(Psalm 3:1-5)

[i] Henry Van Dyke and Joseph Twitchell spoke at Samuel Clemens’ funeral. The only decoration on the altar was a floral wreath fashioned by Dan Beard, another friend of Twain’s. I love the description of the mourning friends, who, as pastors, were called upon to speak what defies words: “For a quarter of an hour the two ministers sat silent, their heads bowed in prayer. No sound was heard through the dark old edifice save a muffled sob. Dr. Twitchell, Twain's oldest and dearest friend, was convulsed with tears. His massive frame shook as he brushed the white locks from his forehead and gazed down into the face of his dead friend. Then Dr. Van Dyke rose and read the beautiful funeral service of the Presbyterian faith. At its conclusion he spoke briefly of Samuel L. Clemens, his friend, not Mark Twain, the author.”
(Associated Press, April 24, 1910)