How can we ever be prepared for the inevitabilities of loved ones? Our being mortal, our knowing of it, and our facing up to its ascendancy, are all different dynamics. We are never spared it’s agony, it’s feeling of leaving us bereft. As if the death of a loved one was a conspiracy against us, a punishment, maybe, of not paying enough attention to them, of taking them for granted, of giving precedence to the insubstantial over the precious.
The amalgam of grief and guilt breaks us, often irretrievably. Often in lethal ways...
How can we ever be prepared for the inevitabilities of loved ones? Our being mortal, our knowing of it, and our facing up to its ascendancy, are all different dynamics. We are never spared it’s agony, it’s feeling of leaving us bereft. As if the death of a loved one was a conspiracy against us, a punishment, maybe, of not paying enough attention to them, of taking them for granted, of giving precedence to the insubstantial over the precious.
The amalgam of grief and guilt breaks us, often irretrievably. Often in lethal ways.
As news breaks, of an immutable illness, an irreversible ailment, we are suddenly face-to-face with the cruelty of time’s progress. Because when we calculate the number of hours we actually have with them, after deducting all that we spend in our other necessary or trivial pursuits, the number which emerges is small, infinitesimally small. And we panic.
And with thudding realisation we try to put a cessation to our small meannesses, the tragedy of picking fights on insignificant slights, of carrying scratches as wounds, of mistaking carelessness as intent.
The compendium of love is a checkered compilation. It is replete with stories of madness stuck in a morass of misunderstanding, of wonderful people lost in the gracelessness of presumption, of being able to forgive the world but not the one who deserves it the most.
Who are we if not fools who fool ourselves and think it’s for the best - we bring about the harakiri of relationships through senseless ego skirmishes and unsubstantiated assumptions, and realise, much later, that it was actually for nothing. Alas, it is often just too late.
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on passing on, gently, bravely, gorgeously -
- When Breath Becomes Air
- What Do I Leave Behind
- An Epitaph Made of Light & Air
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
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The following music was used for this media project:
Music: If There Was A Bit Of You by Reegs'B
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10491-if-there-was-a-bit-of-you
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Deep In The Soul by Reegs'B
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10278-deep-in-the-soul
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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