grief | Bertram's Blog

Grief Is Unique to Each Person

February 23, 2013 — Pat Bertram

My mother, far right, on her 60th wedding anniversary

Today is my mother’s birthday. She would have been 91 if she had lived. Her life wasn’t cut short, nor was her death a tragedy — she’d lived a long life, and for the most part, her death wasn’t particularly horrendous. And even at the end of her life, she managed to get one last wish — to reach her 60th wedding anniversary.

One of the things so confusing about grief is the various lengths of lives and loves. Do you feel more grief if you’d been together for 60 years as my parents were? Do you feel less grief if you’d been together a matter of months?

I was with my soul mate for thirty-four years before death took him. After he died, I’d look at couples like my parents, and I’d envy them their long togetherness, but then I’d look at couples who had been torn apart before they ever had a chance to settle into their lives, and I would be grateful for the years I had with him.

Despite my envy/gratitude, I’ve concluded that when it comes to the loss of a mate, the length of time you were together isn’t a factor in your grief because you always grieve the entire life — everything you had and everything you didn’t have. If you’ve been together for most of your life, there is more of the past to grieve. If you had little time together, you grieve for all you never had. And in my case, I grieved for both the past and the future.

Many other factors are more important than the length of time you had together when it comes to grief. The depth of the connection matters, as does the interdependency of your lives. If you count on two paychecks to pay the bills, for example, and one of those paychecks evaporates, financial fear adds to one’s grief. If you are each other’s support group, providing a sounding board or hugs when necessary, then the loss of that support when you need it most adds to grief. Complications in the relationship can add to grief because you lose any chance of ever smoothing things out. Quick deaths add to grief because of the horrendous shock, and long dyings add to grief because of all the guilt and regrets that built up. And if you lose your mate when you’re relatively young, then you face many years without him, which adds to your grief.

All of these things combine to make grief unique to each person, but what isn’t unique is the sense of loss, the yearning, the hanging on the best we can until life opens up to us once again or until we find peace at the end.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: 60th wedding anniversary, adding to grief, complications of grief, depth of grief, envy/gratitude, grief and loss, interdependency. 4 Comments »

The Mythic Stages of Grief

February 20, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Joseph Campbell was the first person to write about the motifs and archetypes underlying myths, stories, and spiritual traditions. Christopher Vogler, in The Writer’s Journey, further developed this idea of the “hero’s journey,” making it applicable to writers, both in their stories and in their lives.

The hero’s journey is an endlessly fascinating structure because it is endlessly malleable, able to fit any character, any story, any life. We are all on our own mythic journey through life, but our lives are so much more complicated that the life of a character in a novel because we are dealing with quests within quests within quests rather than a single straightforward journey.

Growing up, falling in love, marrying, parenting, writing, making art, growing old are all quests of their own, though each quest is a but a step on our journey though life.

My most recent mythic journey has been the journey through grief. Grief has been, perhaps, the most mythic of all my quests, each of the stages clearly delineated. (In fact, these mythic stages of the hero’s journey are much more applicable to grief than Kübler-Ross’s stages.)

All of us who embark so reluctantly on this journey through grief are true heroes. It takes a hero’s courage and commitment to deal with everything grief bombards us with and come out on the other side stronger, wiser, and accepting of whatever comes our way.

The mythic stages of our heroic journey through grief:

1. Ordinary World. A hero’s journey begins with the normal world, and in the grief quest story, the normal world is the life we shared with our life mate/soul mate.

2. Call to Adventure. His (or her) dying calls us to grief’s adventure, though death is too traumatic an event to be dismissed as a simple call to adventure. There’s no warble of a bugle call; it’s more like the shriek of a smoke alarm that cannot be silenced.

3. Refusal of the Call. We are frozen with grief, reluctant to continue life alone, refusing to see that perhaps continuing alone could be an adventure.

4. Meeting with the Mentors. We go to grief groups for support, and we talk to others who have also lost their mates. Some of us go to bereavement counselors or read about grief to learn how to deal with this horrifying new world.

5. Crossing the threshold. We commit to grief, to whatever changes will come because of it. We allow ourselves to feel without blocking out the pain because we know that is the only way to find our way through the angst to a more peaceful time.

6. Tests, Allies, Enemies. Grief encompasses all these aspects. Grief tests us, our strength, our commitment to life, our beliefs. Grief is an ally, changing us so we can become the person we need to be in order to survive in this new world. And grief is an enemy, bringing more pain than we could have ever imagined.

7. Approach to the Innermost Cave. Grief takes us further away from our ordinary world of a shared life. This is a stage where we regroup. We find a respite from grief for a few days or weeks, leading us to believe that perhaps we can do this after all.

8. Ordeal. Although all of grief is an ordeal, at this particular stage of grief’s journey, the greatest ordeal is accepting that we are alone, that although he is dead, we have to continue living. We thought getting through the initial raw pain of grief was our greatest agony, but now grief throws us even more anguish with the realization that he is never coming back. This new life without him is forever.

9. Rewards. There are many rewards for going through grief. We seize the sword of courage, we find the elixir of patience, we discover the crucible of greater insights. There are consequences, of course, and generally we pay for any rewards with a huge upsurge of grief.

10. The Road Back. The road back is not easy, especially when it comes to grief. Although we can never return to the ordinary world from which we came since that world was shattered forever by his death, we do return to an ordinary world, a world where grief is a companion that merely shadows us, rather than being the trickster that taunts us, the enemy that torments us, the shapeshifter that bewilders us.

11. Resurrection. The hero faces death and is resurrected, and in the case of grief, we face the death of who we once were. We realize we are separate from our life mate/soul mate, that he has his journey and we have ours, and hence we are reborn into a new life. A life that is ours alone.

12. Return with the Elixir. We all bring back from grief certain gifts, whether wisdom or patience or simply the knowledge that we survived the worst ordeal of our lives, and often we share this gift with others. Many of us end up taking care of aged parents, exhibiting a patience we never knew we had. Some of us write or paint to show the world our truth. Some of us go into grief therapy to help others. My magic elixir — my gift, my blessing — has been the unexpected ability to decode grief and write lyrically about the process, such as recognizing the mythic stages of grief and writing this post describing grief as a heroic journey and quest. A strange gift, indeed.

And so life’s journey continues . . .

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Posted in grief, history/myth, life, writing. Tags: dealing with grief, going through grief, journey through grief, mythic stages of grief, stages of grief, the hero's journey. 5 Comments »

My New New Year

February 1, 2013 — Pat Bertram

2013 began with tears. I’m still not sure why, though it probably has to do with a deeper acceptance of my life mate/soul mate’s goneness coupled with the slide toward the third anniversary of his death. You’d think with such a sad beginning to the year that things would ony get better, but my life went downhill from there until I felt as if I were drowning in sadness. So, in an effort to change my outlook, I decided to start the year over.

Last night at midnight, I toasted in my new new year. It seemed such a silly thing to do, yet almost profound at the same time, that it made me smile. I have to admit, I did mist up briefly a little later when I put his photos away. Sometimes seeing them bring me comfort, but sometimes they only serve to remind me of what I have lost, and there is no place for the past in this new new year of mine. (At least not yet. I’m sure there will come a point when I need the small bit of comfort those photos can bring and will set them out again.)

I have to focus on what is, and what “is” is me alone. It’s hard to carry on any kind of relationship with someone who is dead. He doesn’t respond when I talk, doesn’t offer comfort when I need it, doesn’t hug me or smile at me. Not a very fulfilling relationship!

I’m not being entirely facetious, just trying to face the truth.

I’ve read that people who manage to have a relationship with their deceased loved ones are happier than those who shut out any memory of those who are gone, but still, it’s a one-sided relationship. And, to be honest, for me it’s better that way. Since I have to find my own path through the rest of my days, I’d just as soon not have a ghost hanging around, hampering whatever fulfillment I might find. (Hmmm. Is there a story in that?)

I started my new new year in an effort to gain a new focus (or do I mean a new new focus?) And so far, this new new year is going great. Not only can I still feel the effects of that midnight smile, but the weather is gorgeous — blue skies, warm air, the faintest of breezes — which was perfect for my long walk in the desert. Even better, I can feel a slight shift in my outlook, a turning away from the way I wish things were to the way things are and maybe even to the way things are meant to be.

I’m hoping I can continue this new new year the way it has begun, but if I begin drowning in sorrow again, I’ll just start over with a new new new year.

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Posted in culture, grief, life, relationships. Tags: new focus, new new year, new year, relationship with the dead, starting over. 4 Comments »

Happy New Month’s Eve!

January 31, 2013 — Pat Bertram

champagne When I looked at the day on my cell phone today and noticed it was the 31st, my first thought was, “New Years Eve, already?” It felt good thinking that this year was over, and that a new one would begin in just a few hours, and then the truth sunk in — this year would not be over for another eleven months.

This has not been a good year so far — not the worst by a very wide margin, but not good, either. It began inexplicably with tears, and grief has been with me most of the month. (In less than two months, it will be three years since the death of my life mate/soul mate, and that anniversary looms large on my emotional horizon.)

It’s not just the grief upsurge that has made this a hard month — there have been too many disappointments and setbacks for such a new year. Friendships have ended, a project with other authors has come to an ignoble conclusion, new hopes have not been realized, blog and book ratings have fallen. There have been some good things. For example, I was notified that Grief: The Great Yearning came in second place for a book award, but any pleasure in that recognition was destroyed when I got a follow-up email telling me I’d been demoted to third place. (I’m still reeling from that one. I’ve never heard of anyone being demoted before.)

I need a new start, and I’m going to make one. In a way, every day is the eve of a new year, but today is also the eve of a new month, which seems an auspicious time to begin. So, Happy New Month’s Eve! Wishing you a great new start and much happiness during the coming month.

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Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: loss, new month, new start, New Year’s Eve. 13 Comments »

Saying Good-bye

January 29, 2013 — Pat Bertram

During the past three years, I’ve met way too many people who have lost their mates. (Until I became one of them, I had no idea the vast numbers of people living with such grief). Some, like me, lost their mates through a long dying. Others lost them instantly. I’ve never been able to figure out which is worse for survivors to deal with. The quick deaths bring such shock and disbelief that it seems impossible to survive, but we who have plenty of time to get used to the idea have to deal with the memories of our lack of generosity toward our long-dying mates. The trouble is that when someone dies slowly, as the months and maybe even years pass, we get used to their dying. The dying itself becomes a way of life, so that a flash of irritation here or a lack of empathy there means little in the fullness of the days. It’s only when they are gone that these things loom large, and we wonder why we couldn’t have held to our equanimity just a couple of months longer.

But of course, we did not know how short a time we had to be with him. It felt like a new low is all, and at the end, death came in an instant, as all deaths do, bringing shock and disbelief.

In the world of grief, I am one of the lucky ones — I got to say good-bye. That is the thing that haunts so many bereft — their inability bid farewell to the person who meant more to them than any other. It’s not just those whose spouses died suddenly in an accident or from an unnexpected heart attack who never got a chance to say good-bye. I’ve heard sad stories of hospital personnel cleaning out the emergency room too quickly so that the person left behind never even got a chance to see their beloved one last time. I’ve heard of nurses who demanded the bereft to be quiet in their weeping or quick in saying those few final precious words. I’ve heard of doctors who insisted the ill one would get better, giving the couple no reason to believe they would need to say good-bye.

One woman, whose husband died in a vehicle accident, was particularly sick with regret. After she’d been notified of the tragedy, she’d gone to the hospital to find him already on the way to the morgue, leaving her with no way to say good-bye. She too, is one of the lucky ones. He came to her in a dream, and told her it was okay, that he’d already been gone from his body, and that he loved her. And in a way, he had already said good-bye. Shortly before his accident, he had called family and friends he hadn’t talked to in a while and chatted with them for no real particular reason, and then a day or two later he unexpectedly invited her to a special lunch. Two hours after that lunch, he was dead.

Such pre-good-byes are fairly common, as if something in us knows the time of our death and prepares for it, but many bereft are left without even such a farewell to bring them comfort. Since parting words seem so important to the grief process, the unfarewelled bereft have to find other ways to say good-bye such as writing letters to the one who is gone, talking to him, or taking a memorial trip to a place that had special meaning. Actually, these are good ideas even for those of us who did get to say good-bye. I’ve written him and talked to him. Maybe one day I’ll take a memorial trip to a place with special meaning, though to be honest, everyplace we ever went — even the grocery store — was special because we were together.

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Posted in culture, grief, How to. Tags: dreaming of the dead, dying, dying as a way of life, memorial trip, saying good-bye, saying goodbye to the dead. 9 Comments »

The Doors of Grief

January 28, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Years before my life mate/soul mate died, I wrote a character who grieved for her dead husband. It astonishes me that I got any of the effects of grief right since at the time, I hadn’t a clue what the loss of a mate really did to you, how it turned you inside out and upside down and left you reeling with shock and disbelief, regrets and sorrow. A Spark of Heavenly Fire begins:

Kate Cummings counted backward from one hundred, though she knew it wouldn’t help her sleep. Dead people didn’t slumber, and she hadn’t felt alive for a long time. Not since before Joe’s funeral, anyway.

Three. Two. One. She raised her head, squinted at the illuminated face of the alarm clock, and flopped back against the pillow. Five-fifteen. Six hours of thrashing around in bed. She blinked away the sting in her eyes. All she wanted was one good night’s sleep. Was that too much to ask?

One hundred. Ninety-nine. Ninety-six. . . . A sound startled her awake. A siren’s scream, fading now. She checked the time. Five-thirty. Even if she could doze off again, she’d have to rise in less than an hour. Not worth the effort.

She hauled herself upright and groped for her eyeglasses. After sitting on the edge of the bed for a moment, gathering her strength, she dressed and wandered through the house. She hesitated by the closed door of the second bedroom where her husband had lived during the last years of his protracted illness, touched the knob with her fingertips. Yanked her hand away.

This is ridiculous. Joe’s been gone for thirteen months.

Taking a deep breath, she grasped the knob, but could not force herself to turn it. She rested her forehead on the door for a minute, wondering if she’d ever be able to face the ghosts of sorrow and regret locked inside, then squared her shoulders and headed for the front closet to grab a coat and hat.

***

Later, she explains to a new friend:

“About two weeks after the funeral, I decided to clean Joe’s room. I didn’t feel up to sorting out his things, but I thought I should dust and vacuum in there. I cracked opened the door, as if expecting Joe, or at least his spirit, to inhabit the room. I stepped inside, but seconds later I scrambled out again and slammed the door.

“Memories of all the shameful, petty, inconsiderate things I had done over the years haunted the room, and I couldn’t bear to face my own mean spirit. Too many times I snapped at him or purposely waited a few minutes before going to see what he wanted when he called out. Other times I felt so angry at the way life had treated us, I stomped around the house, slamming doors and kicking furniture. Usually, though, I pounded my pillow, or cried. I’m embarrassed to admit how many times I cried, wishing I had a normal life with healthy children to take care of instead of an uncommunicative and disabled man. Sometimes I even hated him for what he had become, as if he chose to get sick. Can you believe that?”

She didn’t pause for a response, but hurried on, wanting to get it all out.

“Worst of all, I realized I was not a strong woman who had shouldered her burden with courage, but a weak woman who lacked generosity of spirit.”

***

I didn’t have a real door to close — I had to leave our home and come look after my aged father — but there are plenty of doors in my head that I slammed shut. It’s only now, after thirty-four months that I’m able to open them a crack, peek at the ghosts of my ungenerous and petty moments, and understand.

For the most part, I handled the stress of his dying well, but there were times I resented him, even hated him, though now I know it wasn’t he I resented or hated, but his dying. Everything that irked me — his skinniness, his rocking when he stood talking to me (he was so weak, it was the only way he could keep his balance), his inability to carry on a conversation, and his testiness — were all facets of “dying man” not the man himself. To a certain extent, he died long before his last breath. He never blamed me for my resentment because he too hated what he had become. He once admitted he didn’t even recognize himself anymore.

Death does appalling things to people, not just to those who are dying, but to those who have to continue living. Whatever our problems, those last terrible months, we had a chance to reconnect for a few weeks before he died, and I got to say good-bye to the man I love, not just the shadow of that man he had become.

And that is what I will remember — not all the petty secrets I’m gradually bringing out from behind closed doors, but our sweet good-bye.

***

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, effects of grief, generosity of spirit, loss of a spouse, regrets. 4 Comments »

Thirty-Four Months of Grief

January 27, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Thirty-four months ago today, my life mate/soul mate died of inoperable kidney cancer. For thirty-four months now, I have been posting updates on my progress through grief, and that astounds me. Thirty-four months? How is that possible? Written out, it seems such a short time for him to have been gone, and yet it feels immeasurably vast — so many minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and now years, spent trying to come to grips with what happened to us. For most of our lives we were connected by some mystical bond, a cosmic twinning, that kept us together even when times were rough. And then suddenly, in a single breath, that connection was broken. I am here, alone, and he is . . . well, I don’t know where he is or even if he is.

I never had survivor’s guilt for the simple reason that I wasn’t sure which of us got the worst end of the deal, but I have felt uncomfortable going on without him, as if somehow I were being disloyal. We helped fight each other’s battles, sticking up for each other, caring for each other, waiting for whichever of us happened to be lagging behind, always taking the other into consideration, and it feels as if I should still be doing so. But he is beyond my reach, beyond my care, beyond my consideration.

I have come to see that continuing the disconnect that began with his descent into death is one of the tasks of my grief. (Grief seems to be not so much about passing through stages, but more about completing tasks, such as processing the loss and learning to live again.) Until I understand within my depths that for all practical (earthly) purposes we are not one, I will never be able to embrace fully what life has in store for me. We are separate persons, each with our own experiences, our own journey, and our own destination. For a while, our paths crossed, but now, I have to continue as me, alone. No matter what I do, or think or feel, it cannot change the past. No matter how much I hate that he is dead, no matter how much I rail against the unfairness, no matter how much I miss him or wish desperately for one more word or smile, he is no longer in my life.

For most of those thirty-four months, this disconnect has seemed an impossible task, but there is a bit of light illuminating my path. Last week, when I went to my Yoga class, they asked how I was, and I said, without thinking, “I’m doing great.” It stunned me to hear those words come out of my mouth, because for more than five years, during the last of his dying and these many months of grief, I have had times of feeling okay, and I thought that was the best I could do. But at that moment, I did feel great. It didn’t last long, only about an hour before I began sliding into sadness again, but that hour stands as a beacon for what might be.

Up until that class, this year has been one of increased sorrow and tears, and such grief upsurges often precede or follow a deeper level of acceptance. It’s not so much that I am learning to accept his death — I accepted the truth of it from the beginning, though I hate it and will never be able to comprehend it — but I am learning to accept that I am alive, and that is a much harder thing to accept.

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Posted in being me, culture, grief, life. Tags: acceptance of death, acceptance of life, grief and loss, grief tasks, loyalty to the dead, survivors guilt. 15 Comments »

The Sad Song of Grief

January 16, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Music I started crying at the grocery store yesterday.

The last time I cried in public was a year and a half ago at that very supermarket, which reminds me of where my deceased life mate/soul mate and I used shop. I don’t often go to this store, but it’s the only place I can get the salad dressing I use. After I picked up the salad dressing bottle, I looked for some other flavors in that same store brand, wondering if I should try something new, and I saw a dressing he liked. It struck me as being unbearably sad, and right there, in the salad dressing aisle, I started to weep.

The tearfulness caught me by surprise, but I should have expected the flare-up because I’ve been struggling with sorrow for the past two weeks. This year was the third New Year since his death, and inexplicably it began with tears. Grief had been leaving me alone, and I hadn’t had a strong upsurge for a long time — I thought I was through with grief, to be honest — but when the calendar rolled over from 2012 to 2013, grief came calling once again.

This new phase of grief is different from all the others. There is no great pain, no bewilderment, no shattered heart, but sorrow is always with me like a sad song playing in the background of my life. I don’t notice it all the time or pay much attention to it, but still, it’s there.

Last night I watched A League of Their Own (the version he taped, where he cut out the bickering between the two sisters to make it more of a baseball movie) and it affected me more than I thought it would. When one girl got a telegram about her husband dying in the war, I realized that never again would I have to deal with the horrendous shock and sorrow of seeing my mate die, and when Bill Pullman came back from the war, I realized never again in this life would I have such a reunion with my mate. And Madonna’s “Playground” at the end about tore me up.

This used to be our playground (used to be)
This used to be our childhood dream
This used to be the place we ran to
I wish you were standing here with me

It dawned on me then that this latest version of grief feels like sorrow for the end of childhood. I am a long way past childhood, but there was an innocence to our relationship, a belief that no matter how bad things got, we would survive because we had each other. As I discovered though, my love for him couldn’t make him well, couldn’t take away a moment of his pain, couldn’t keep him from dying. The innocent belief that love conquers all, the belief in “us,” is destroyed forever, and I will never get it back, not until I’m dead, too.

It’s ironic — so much was destroyed by his death, but the one thing I thought would be destroyed (me) is still going strong. Sad, but strong.

I got through everything else grief has thrown at me, and I’ll get through this sad song, too. Just, apparently, not yet.

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Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: A League of Their Own, end of childhood, end of innocence, grief and New Years, love conquers all, Madonna, Playground. 6 Comments »

30 Second Book Trailer For GRIEF: THE GREAT YEARNING

January 10, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Grief: The Great Yearning is a finalist in the memoir category for the Sharp Writ Book Awards, and they asked me for a 30 second introduction to the book for their “awards ceremony” video. A couple of days ago I posted a draft of this video and here’s the finished video blurb.

After I put this video together, I realized an interesting coincidence: All the photos were taken in August, around the 15th.

The first photo might look like the desert, but it’s a photo of him in Colorado at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a few months before he died. I didn’t even know I had the photo, but I found it in a computer file after he was gone, and it shattered what was left of my heart. It looked as if he’d already been moving away from me toward eternity. Oddly, though I didn’t plan it, the three photos I used in the video were all taken within a few minutes of each other on that excursion. The gnarled tree with the stormy clouds, the profound depth of the canyon, the photo of him looking to eternity all now seem to be signs of my unconscious grief.

The photo on the cover of the book is taken in the very same place, exactly a year earlier. The photo of the two of us together (the only photo ever taken of the two of us together) was taken exactly thirteen years earlier than the three photos. And we met exactly thirty-two years before that last trip to the Black Canyon. I had no idea August was such a significant month for me.

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Posted in books, grief, relationships, writing. Tags: August, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Grief: The Great Yearning, Sharp Writ Book Awards, significant month. 15 Comments »

Grief and the Empty Timeline of Death

January 9, 2013 — Pat Bertram

My life mate/soul mate died 33 months ago. He was 63 at the time, a few months shy of his 64th birthday. Today, his mother called and during the conversation she mentioned that he would now be 66. This revelation stopped me in my mental tracks. 66?

During all these months, not once have I ever stopped to calculate what his age would have been had he lived. It felt as if time stopped when he died — not all time, just his time. And yet, his time continues. The timeline that began with his birth is still going on. When she mentioned his age, I got the mental image of a shadow of his ghost continuing to ride that timeline. Not him, not his spirit (because if he does still exist somewhere, he is outside of time) but simply the shadow of what might have been.

Normally such a thought would have swept me back into grief, but this image (at least for now) has me befuddled.

I’ve been thinking of him as 63 years old. As such, he is still older than I am, but I’ve been wondering how I will feel when I get to the age he was when he died, or later, when I grow older than he ever did. Will I feel foolish as a raddled 86-year-old, still yearning for such youthful-looking man? (The only photo I have of him was taken when he was not yet 50. And as my memories fade, that will be the only image I remember him by.)

And yet, there is his continuing timeline. What is growing older? Well, me, of course. I am aware that I will continue to age, but he will be forever a relatively young 63. Yet something — some shadow of him or his life — continues to grow older.

Or is his just an empty timeline now?

I spent most of last night learning how to use Microsoft Movie Maker and putting together a video blurb of Grief: The Great Yearning. The music piece was supposed to be thirty seconds, and it was, but there were also seven blank seconds on the end of the music clip, so that when the video finished playing, the timeline continued blankly for another seven seconds.

Perhaps it’s the coincidence of the two blank timelines that unsettles me, but I truly do not know how to grasp the concept of his empty timeline. He can’t continue to age, and yet his birthdays will come, year after year.

The emptiness of it all makes me want to weep; yet strangely, I am dry-eyed.

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