100 things ~003
{Take the 100 Things challenge!}
"And yet you hold life like a face between your palms,
a plain face, with no charming smile
or twinkle in her eye,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you again."
- Ellen Bass, To love life
This is the ending of a poem that I've known for a few years, but only decided to learn by heart recently because I stumbled upon it again. I found different versions of it, but I memorised the one I originally found at exceptindreams.
The thing is
to love life
to love it even when you have no
stomach for it, when everything you've held
dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands
and your throat is filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you so heavily
it's like heat, tropical, moist
thickening the air so it's heavy like water
more fit for gills than lungs.
When grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief.
How long can a body withstand this? you think,
and yet you hold life like a face between your palms,
a plain face, with no charming smile
or twinkle in her eye,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you again.
- Ellen Bass
It isn't that this poem is particularly relevant to my life at the moment (I believe and hope that my life currently means well for me) and I think I luckily haven't experienced situations of that extreme loss (maybe I came close to the grief this poem describes a few times, but it isn't as if my life has been turned upside-down in a very tragic way). However, it paints such a clear image of that grief that I can't help imagining what it would be like and feeling a kind of empathy and admiration for the narrating persona, so that the ending always takes my breath away with its bittersweet and yet powerful message.
I imagine that this poem, when you dare to grasp at it like a straw in the darkness, can be an incredible source of hope and strength - personally because it shows me that it could be a lot worse than I have it, that grief can bring you down and choke you until you almost suffocate, and generally because it tells you that life does go on and it WILL GET BETTER. Still, the poem implies a proactive approach - you have to be able to embrace the positive sides yourself because on the whole, life may not present itself to you with its nicest face, "with no charming smile or twinkle in her eye".