"I’ve learned my heart is a lake where something has fallen."
Mary, this is too intimate to throw out as a "share" or a "restack." I'm going to let this one be. Let others find this by chance, or word of mouth, or wandering through their own cemeteries. They will.
Mary, my dear love of a friend, this exquisite grief is so much. I was traveling all yesterday and I just read this after my morning rosary. Thank you for sharing this, although it is so painful. Joys shared are multiplied, and griefs shared are divided. Thank you for the gift of letting us carry this grief with you.
Dear Mary, I feel your grief in these fragmentary notes and the love and care between you and your son. What comes to mind is an image that another woman gave me when I was pregnant with my son and firstborn. She advised me to envision contractions as ocean swells, and I should surf them rather than fighting them. I thought of that image and appreciated it in the labor room. Your essay reminds me of that thoughtful, wise woman because these notes feel to me like they surf your grief rather than fighting it, wave after wave. As Elizabeth Bobrick wrote, "you have woven in the elements of women's lives from the beginning of time." So much is out of our control. So much leaves us raw. Your loss is incomprehensible. I wish you comfort, when comfort is possible. All these hands on keyboards in the comments are hands stretched toward you. ❤️
Ah, Tara, you beautifully express the essence of what I tried to express. My open heart holds you and your writing and thoughts that embrace all who read you.
Indeed, the election, at least for me being one of those shadows. We don't have to agree on the latter. We agree on so much more and you a gift in my life.
Mary, as you see already, you have touched many hearts, and you will touch many more. You’ve enumerated a mother’s worst imagining, yet with such love and selflessness. Fire, water, cooking, birth, and yes, the death of children: you have woven in the elements of women’s lives from the beginning of time. Bless you, and may his memory be a blessing.
"the elements of women's lives from the beginning of time" - yes. We are vulnerable to losses beyond imagining, not knowing which of us they will strike or when or how. That "not-knowing" in Mary's last line is the thing that demands obeisance.
Dear Mary, this is an achingly beautiful tribute and testimony to your beloved son and your grief at his loss. How small a word is 'grief', how large is the truth of it. Thank you for sharing this with us here.
This is a stunning, heartbreaking piece, Mary. I am so glad you wrote it and I’m so sorry you lost him. The story about him flying you to Australia, I remember that story from your book and it was so beautiful how he thought of you and insisted on trying to look after you. Much love
Mary, this piece is profoundly raw, gutting, and somehow also deeply quickening, enlivening. I've sat with it for a long time now and each time I read your layers upon layers of meaning, something new emerges, not dissimilar to the process of grieving. But the overarching aha will remain with me for the rest of my days: grief itself is a lifeboat. This is so hard for some to understand and yet you articulate this experience with a great, unavoidable swelling of truth. Your ability to allow the pain to buoy you, to expand your human experience to join all the others also in pain until our frailty and vulnerability IS our salvation, this is truly a lesson for all time.
Kimberly, Your profound understanding of the meaning of the title "Lifeboat" -- and you hit on that the first time I shared the essay with you. I was so blown away by your understanding. Form and meaning for me are so inextricable as a writer that I knew the piece had to work this way as I began to go through the notes and found a way to order them and the title literally emerged from my process--illusive as it apparently was for literary magazine editors. Your concept of a buoy in the sea of grief is exactly what I was hoping to emerge. 💞 So looking forward to your guest post next week, on our regular day: Tuesday. Of course, I had to choose the fourth because that is the anniversary of Ben's death. Love, Mary
It certainly makes me question how deeply literary magazine editors actually read. And the form is inseparable from the vulnerability of this piece! I couldn't fathom it all tidy in a structured narrative, that's not how grief lives! I do still have my heart set on seeing an animation of this someday, I trust that the stellar creatives out there to execute such a thing will flock to you when the timing is right.
This heartbreaking piece you wrote is so heartopening, Mary, as the question echoes in your loving, grieving, torn open heart,
"Did you know that with your loss, my heart has opened and deepened and that the place for falling remains, the falling of the fallen, the falling of the hurt?"
As a sister, having lost a beloved brother to the ocean, I can barely imagine the depth of your loss, and the place in the heart that remains open, and deep, and raw.
As a mother of three cherished children, I can't bear to imagine the falling of the hurt, or the hurting of the never ending fall.
I see your face in the portrait of Ben, your gaze in his eyes.
I wonder what editors of literary magazines are thinking, feeling, imagining, looking for...
Do they see the light and love shining through the lines that have poured out of your heart ~ fractured but not broken ~ the tender lifeboat you have created and are offering so gracefully to share with anyone lost at sea, under the sky that rains into the dark green-blue of loss.
Do they even read those life-saving words, cast out into drowning worlds, as a safety net, where the missing remains?
My dear Veronika, your words come to me from your loss of your brother to the ocean that to me is like a sea of tears from all the losses we the living must bear. The beauty of your words, the empathy you cast on me and this essay give me courage, courage that has been disappearing, like losing my sense of being. As the “notes” emerged as a form, I saw anew. Then when sending out to literary magazines, the forms came back with no encouragement. I thought what I’d written had no worth—even as I knew what I had done went well-beyond catharsis. But said to myself, “You must be wrong. You are not seen, will not be seen." Then the date November 4th came on me—and I withdrew on the 3rd all the places that still had this piece, most likely unseen, and thanked them for any consideration it might have gotten. Only one editor of so many was deeply moved by it but she wanted it completely rewritten and put in a more narrative format. But form and meaning are inextricably joined for me. So be it. It is here and you have my heartfelt gratitude.
Oh Mary, such a response from any editor is utterly unacceptable! Your writing is exquisite. Full of depth, heartfelt truths and sorrows, plenty of real life experience, captured in language that is so alive. I can't believe it! (well, I totally believe what you say of course.)
The only explanation I have for such a puzzling response from the 'gate-keepers' in our creative craft- and art-form is that they must be reflecting the inner voice. The one who keeps saying, “You must be wrong. You are not seen, will not be seen."
I know this voice, too, very well. Self-doubt and self-rejection have been a lifelong companion, over six and a half decades to be precise.
Witnessing your journey (in parallel with my own) I am coming to the conclusion that this companionship hones a unique writer's voice. The gate-keeper asking you to 'rewrite' what is already so perfectly captured in the format of your choice...
[did they even read the introductory paragraph: "After my forty-six-year-old son died, I needed to go back to school. Not to stand at the red door of the schoolhouse with hope, but to learn how to survive.
So, I took notes like a child."???]
.... who requests a 'more narrative format'...
[presumably following the current 'narrative non-fiction' trend]
sounds (to me) like a classic 'Goblin at the Gate', testing the resolve of the heroine on her journey.
"form and meaning are inextricably joined" ~ of course!
You are a master of your craft!! Who am I to remind you...?
Your understanding, Veronika, nails it! I hope more folks read this and you. We do know that the more challenging a piece may be, the harder, too often, the acceptance, and perhaps my piece falls in that category of challenging--though straight from my heart.
Your writing comes from real life experience, which is challenging! Especially when the experience is as painful as losing a beloved child.
You are sharing your own process (rather than 'just' describing an experience for the reader to engage in). This is very raw and vulnerable writing, which requires extra layers of inner self-protection, I feel.
Although writing about negative stuff is also very popular in various literary genres, it is mostly presented as a kind of 'entertainment'. Not as personal as the piece you're offering here.
On the other hand we are writing, reading and living in an era of collectively edging closer towards the very personal explorations and presentations of painful experience (see the relatively new and very brave genre of trauma memoirs).
Perhaps, if your piece was framed in that way, it would elicit greater resonance?
Mary, thank you for trusting us with this lovely memorial. Do you know Mark Doty's "Heaven's Coast"? I think it would speak to you. I know well how it feels to be undone by grief, though the loss of a child is another level entirely. Is there really a way through? I wonder.
Yes, I wrote at the end of a piece about my grandparents that we shore up our ruins with those who remain (also your lifeboat theme). But the ruins remain, too. And sometimes, when we love someone deeply, fiercely, even the support of others isn't enough. I hear you resisting "acceptance" in a similar way, although perhaps that is not how you'd characterize it.
Mary, so achingly beautiful. I am so sorry for the loss of your beloved son, the grief you carry is the weight of love. Blessings to you... Thank you for bravely sharing this with us all.
Mary my blood thickened and my heart tangled and knotted as I read your soulful, haunted, beautiful and profound words. I am so sorry for your loss and feel expressing this is just a cliché. But we have all lost loved ones, but your expression of the stone created by grief and loss turns the devastating irritation into a pearl of beauty.
You've created something beautiful out of your grief, Mary. I think maybe you hoped to, a place for your love and the love between you to reside, in all those visions, those connections? A watercolor in words. Heart to heart.
Oh Mary, this has just totally shattered my heart into pieces. I’m so, so sorry for your loss. Your love for your son, the nature of your relationship, and the unspeakable pain… It all comes across so vividly in your beautiful, haunting writing. Each note, and how it weaves into the next… I have no words. Except that I’m sorry for this unspeakable loss, and thank you for sharing your heart with us. I feel truly honoured.
Oh, Imola, my heart swells with your kind words. Thank you so for reading and taking the time to write your words and for me to know that I have been read.
"I’ve learned my heart is a lake where something has fallen."
Mary, this is too intimate to throw out as a "share" or a "restack." I'm going to let this one be. Let others find this by chance, or word of mouth, or wandering through their own cemeteries. They will.
One can hope, Adam. Also, on my own site--if you venture there.
Mary, my dear love of a friend, this exquisite grief is so much. I was traveling all yesterday and I just read this after my morning rosary. Thank you for sharing this, although it is so painful. Joys shared are multiplied, and griefs shared are divided. Thank you for the gift of letting us carry this grief with you.
Zina, it is I who thank you for your open heart that was able to read this, to travel with me, to be my lifeboat.
Dear Mary, I feel your grief in these fragmentary notes and the love and care between you and your son. What comes to mind is an image that another woman gave me when I was pregnant with my son and firstborn. She advised me to envision contractions as ocean swells, and I should surf them rather than fighting them. I thought of that image and appreciated it in the labor room. Your essay reminds me of that thoughtful, wise woman because these notes feel to me like they surf your grief rather than fighting it, wave after wave. As Elizabeth Bobrick wrote, "you have woven in the elements of women's lives from the beginning of time." So much is out of our control. So much leaves us raw. Your loss is incomprehensible. I wish you comfort, when comfort is possible. All these hands on keyboards in the comments are hands stretched toward you. ❤️
Ah, Tara, you beautifully express the essence of what I tried to express. My open heart holds you and your writing and thoughts that embrace all who read you.
Sending you a virtual hug for all the shadows of this week.
Indeed, the election, at least for me being one of those shadows. We don't have to agree on the latter. We agree on so much more and you a gift in my life.
I agree and had that in mind. It’s a hard double-strike.
Indeed, I'm devastated.
Mary, as you see already, you have touched many hearts, and you will touch many more. You’ve enumerated a mother’s worst imagining, yet with such love and selflessness. Fire, water, cooking, birth, and yes, the death of children: you have woven in the elements of women’s lives from the beginning of time. Bless you, and may his memory be a blessing.
"the elements of women's lives from the beginning of time" - yes. We are vulnerable to losses beyond imagining, not knowing which of us they will strike or when or how. That "not-knowing" in Mary's last line is the thing that demands obeisance.
What a gorgeous summation of what I tried to do in my son's memory. Thank you, Elizabeth. 💞
Dear Mary, this is an achingly beautiful tribute and testimony to your beloved son and your grief at his loss. How small a word is 'grief', how large is the truth of it. Thank you for sharing this with us here.
Yes, Margaret, "how small a word is grief"--you express the heart of the essay here. 💞
This is a stunning, heartbreaking piece, Mary. I am so glad you wrote it and I’m so sorry you lost him. The story about him flying you to Australia, I remember that story from your book and it was so beautiful how he thought of you and insisted on trying to look after you. Much love
Oh, Noha, your words here giving me both hope and courage as I move through the struggle to survive profound loss. Love to you, Mary
I think the loss of a child is quite possibly the most difficult of all losses. Be kind to yourself and recognize your courage. ❤️❤️
Yes, my dear, yes ... thus the amount of time it took me to write the essay.
Of course. Like you said at the start, it must have taken you everything
Thank you for sharing this heartfelt, heartrending piece— it is a service and gift for your readers and may be someone else’s lifeboat too.
Oh, Victoria, what a beautiful expression of what I tried to do. Heart to heart ~ Mary
Mary, this piece is profoundly raw, gutting, and somehow also deeply quickening, enlivening. I've sat with it for a long time now and each time I read your layers upon layers of meaning, something new emerges, not dissimilar to the process of grieving. But the overarching aha will remain with me for the rest of my days: grief itself is a lifeboat. This is so hard for some to understand and yet you articulate this experience with a great, unavoidable swelling of truth. Your ability to allow the pain to buoy you, to expand your human experience to join all the others also in pain until our frailty and vulnerability IS our salvation, this is truly a lesson for all time.
Kimberly, Your profound understanding of the meaning of the title "Lifeboat" -- and you hit on that the first time I shared the essay with you. I was so blown away by your understanding. Form and meaning for me are so inextricable as a writer that I knew the piece had to work this way as I began to go through the notes and found a way to order them and the title literally emerged from my process--illusive as it apparently was for literary magazine editors. Your concept of a buoy in the sea of grief is exactly what I was hoping to emerge. 💞 So looking forward to your guest post next week, on our regular day: Tuesday. Of course, I had to choose the fourth because that is the anniversary of Ben's death. Love, Mary
It certainly makes me question how deeply literary magazine editors actually read. And the form is inseparable from the vulnerability of this piece! I couldn't fathom it all tidy in a structured narrative, that's not how grief lives! I do still have my heart set on seeing an animation of this someday, I trust that the stellar creatives out there to execute such a thing will flock to you when the timing is right.
Maybe we'll find a way to do an animation: You're so brilliant at the technology--while I am a bit of a dunce.
This heartbreaking piece you wrote is so heartopening, Mary, as the question echoes in your loving, grieving, torn open heart,
"Did you know that with your loss, my heart has opened and deepened and that the place for falling remains, the falling of the fallen, the falling of the hurt?"
As a sister, having lost a beloved brother to the ocean, I can barely imagine the depth of your loss, and the place in the heart that remains open, and deep, and raw.
As a mother of three cherished children, I can't bear to imagine the falling of the hurt, or the hurting of the never ending fall.
I see your face in the portrait of Ben, your gaze in his eyes.
I wonder what editors of literary magazines are thinking, feeling, imagining, looking for...
Do they see the light and love shining through the lines that have poured out of your heart ~ fractured but not broken ~ the tender lifeboat you have created and are offering so gracefully to share with anyone lost at sea, under the sky that rains into the dark green-blue of loss.
Do they even read those life-saving words, cast out into drowning worlds, as a safety net, where the missing remains?
My dear Veronika, your words come to me from your loss of your brother to the ocean that to me is like a sea of tears from all the losses we the living must bear. The beauty of your words, the empathy you cast on me and this essay give me courage, courage that has been disappearing, like losing my sense of being. As the “notes” emerged as a form, I saw anew. Then when sending out to literary magazines, the forms came back with no encouragement. I thought what I’d written had no worth—even as I knew what I had done went well-beyond catharsis. But said to myself, “You must be wrong. You are not seen, will not be seen." Then the date November 4th came on me—and I withdrew on the 3rd all the places that still had this piece, most likely unseen, and thanked them for any consideration it might have gotten. Only one editor of so many was deeply moved by it but she wanted it completely rewritten and put in a more narrative format. But form and meaning are inextricably joined for me. So be it. It is here and you have my heartfelt gratitude.
Oh Mary, such a response from any editor is utterly unacceptable! Your writing is exquisite. Full of depth, heartfelt truths and sorrows, plenty of real life experience, captured in language that is so alive. I can't believe it! (well, I totally believe what you say of course.)
The only explanation I have for such a puzzling response from the 'gate-keepers' in our creative craft- and art-form is that they must be reflecting the inner voice. The one who keeps saying, “You must be wrong. You are not seen, will not be seen."
I know this voice, too, very well. Self-doubt and self-rejection have been a lifelong companion, over six and a half decades to be precise.
Witnessing your journey (in parallel with my own) I am coming to the conclusion that this companionship hones a unique writer's voice. The gate-keeper asking you to 'rewrite' what is already so perfectly captured in the format of your choice...
[did they even read the introductory paragraph: "After my forty-six-year-old son died, I needed to go back to school. Not to stand at the red door of the schoolhouse with hope, but to learn how to survive.
So, I took notes like a child."???]
.... who requests a 'more narrative format'...
[presumably following the current 'narrative non-fiction' trend]
sounds (to me) like a classic 'Goblin at the Gate', testing the resolve of the heroine on her journey.
"form and meaning are inextricably joined" ~ of course!
You are a master of your craft!! Who am I to remind you...?
I couldn't have said this more perfectly Veronika.
Your understanding, Veronika, nails it! I hope more folks read this and you. We do know that the more challenging a piece may be, the harder, too often, the acceptance, and perhaps my piece falls in that category of challenging--though straight from my heart.
Your writing comes from real life experience, which is challenging! Especially when the experience is as painful as losing a beloved child.
You are sharing your own process (rather than 'just' describing an experience for the reader to engage in). This is very raw and vulnerable writing, which requires extra layers of inner self-protection, I feel.
Although writing about negative stuff is also very popular in various literary genres, it is mostly presented as a kind of 'entertainment'. Not as personal as the piece you're offering here.
On the other hand we are writing, reading and living in an era of collectively edging closer towards the very personal explorations and presentations of painful experience (see the relatively new and very brave genre of trauma memoirs).
Perhaps, if your piece was framed in that way, it would elicit greater resonance?
I wonder. But as we writers must say, I am who I am ... xo
absolutely 💕
Mary, thank you for trusting us with this lovely memorial. Do you know Mark Doty's "Heaven's Coast"? I think it would speak to you. I know well how it feels to be undone by grief, though the loss of a child is another level entirely. Is there really a way through? I wonder.
I have read much of Mark Doty and will look for this one. Thank you, Josh, for reading. I do hope it spoke to you in some way?
Yes, I wrote at the end of a piece about my grandparents that we shore up our ruins with those who remain (also your lifeboat theme). But the ruins remain, too. And sometimes, when we love someone deeply, fiercely, even the support of others isn't enough. I hear you resisting "acceptance" in a similar way, although perhaps that is not how you'd characterize it.
Mary, Such a beautiful, raw, heartfelt tribute.
Oh, Russell, means so much to see you here, to know you read.
Mary, so achingly beautiful. I am so sorry for the loss of your beloved son, the grief you carry is the weight of love. Blessings to you... Thank you for bravely sharing this with us all.
The weight of love, yes, Pamela. Thank you for taking time to say this to me.
Mary my blood thickened and my heart tangled and knotted as I read your soulful, haunted, beautiful and profound words. I am so sorry for your loss and feel expressing this is just a cliché. But we have all lost loved ones, but your expression of the stone created by grief and loss turns the devastating irritation into a pearl of beauty.
That means so much, Laura. I feel with your words that he and I have been seen. ~ M.
You've created something beautiful out of your grief, Mary. I think maybe you hoped to, a place for your love and the love between you to reside, in all those visions, those connections? A watercolor in words. Heart to heart.
Heart back to your heart, dear poet and friend.
Oh Mary, this has just totally shattered my heart into pieces. I’m so, so sorry for your loss. Your love for your son, the nature of your relationship, and the unspeakable pain… It all comes across so vividly in your beautiful, haunting writing. Each note, and how it weaves into the next… I have no words. Except that I’m sorry for this unspeakable loss, and thank you for sharing your heart with us. I feel truly honoured.
Oh, Imola, my heart swells with your kind words. Thank you so for reading and taking the time to write your words and for me to know that I have been read.
I always feel enriched reading you Mary. Less alone, more like a human being. Your book has finally arrived and I can’t wait to dive in!
Oh, my, Imola. Perhaps my son hears your words ...