Holding Tight...

[liralen]

"... To live in this world

you must be able
to do three thing: to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go." -- Mary Oliver, "In Blackwater Woods

Comments

[incandescens]

I always enjoy reading your entries, and am glad to know things are well with you.

[liralen]

Thank you so much.

[liralen]

For this and for being my friend for so very long. I'm grateful for you.

[archangelbeth]

*just sends hugs, and is glad of the update*

[liralen]

*hugs happily back*

[kjc]

Glad to read things are going well & that you had such a lovely holiday.

Grief is a strange, strange thing. I'm grateful that you're getting an opportunity to work through it in a way that feels positive to you.

[liralen]

Thank you!

And, yes. It's kind of a privilege, I think... which seems an odd way of putting it, but after George's death, where there was the profound feeling of being grateful for being present... it's changed a lot of how I see loss and how fiercely I simply want to be present with someone I care about. In some ways, it's the thing I can do when I can't do anything about the inevitability of this and many other losses.

Anyway... thank you, and yes, and I'm glad of your friendship through all these decades.

[tagryn]

I'm glad you got to see your friend. *hugs*

Came across this a couple of days ago while searching for something else:

(In the introduction to her book "The Death of a Woman," Jungian analyst Jane Wheelwright cites an event in the life of Edna Kaehele who had been sent home from the hospital to die of cancer:)

She recounts the experience of looking at herself in the mirror and seeing the skeleton she had become. At the same time, however, she was aware of her self being very much there. She wrote, "If this divestiture of the flesh cannot alter the inner life -- can anything? Can time? Can eternity? You know finally, simply, and irrefutably that you exist independent of this flesh; that you will continue to exist as an independent entity through aeons of changing matter." (p. 10).

[liralen]

*hugs* I'm very thankful, yes.

Oh, yes. That. Thank you.

I think that's what I got a sense of with her and this visit.