Hello my lovely readers
Today's post returns from the political to the more personal - although it is also sort of activist. This week is the first ever National Grief Awareness Week in the UK, from 2nd-8th December. I am participating, despite being away in South Africa until January, because one of the reasons I needed to take a break right now is the intensity of emotion around Christmas.
Those of you who read my longer poem for Children's Grief Awareness Day (and those of you who went to primary school with me) will likely be unsurprised that my ten-year-old self is particularly present at this time of year. It's my dear friend Gemma's eighteenth anniversary next Monday (on the 9th). I'll write about that on the day. However, it isn't just her I miss around now, but everyone, because grief has a funny way of melding and mixing. And frankly not making any sense, at the same time as making perfect sense. So, as it's National Grief Awareness Week back home, they all feel important to acknowledge. The Good Grief Trust are asking for posts on Instagram with the names of people being remembered, and I'm going to do that too, but I wanted to mark it as part of this series.
So here is today's sonnet. It references a speech by Leonato in Much Ado about Nothing, where he gets frustrated by platitudes. It's beautiful. There are a couple of caveats here of course. Firstly, I would never presume to know a parent's pain after the death of a child. Secondly, Hero doesn't actually die, and the mixed emotions I feel about death and grief being part of an elaborate disguise are too complex to put into words. Nevertheless, I find the play helpful because it depicts young people mourning another young person, and Leonato's aforementioned speech is really one of the most accurate assessments of the experience of bereavement I have so far discovered. There's no picture below the poem this time, in hopes it will be self-sufficient.
4th December 2019
This verse is penned to honour seventeen
Today's post returns from the political to the more personal - although it is also sort of activist. This week is the first ever National Grief Awareness Week in the UK, from 2nd-8th December. I am participating, despite being away in South Africa until January, because one of the reasons I needed to take a break right now is the intensity of emotion around Christmas.
Those of you who read my longer poem for Children's Grief Awareness Day (and those of you who went to primary school with me) will likely be unsurprised that my ten-year-old self is particularly present at this time of year. It's my dear friend Gemma's eighteenth anniversary next Monday (on the 9th). I'll write about that on the day. However, it isn't just her I miss around now, but everyone, because grief has a funny way of melding and mixing. And frankly not making any sense, at the same time as making perfect sense. So, as it's National Grief Awareness Week back home, they all feel important to acknowledge. The Good Grief Trust are asking for posts on Instagram with the names of people being remembered, and I'm going to do that too, but I wanted to mark it as part of this series.
So here is today's sonnet. It references a speech by Leonato in Much Ado about Nothing, where he gets frustrated by platitudes. It's beautiful. There are a couple of caveats here of course. Firstly, I would never presume to know a parent's pain after the death of a child. Secondly, Hero doesn't actually die, and the mixed emotions I feel about death and grief being part of an elaborate disguise are too complex to put into words. Nevertheless, I find the play helpful because it depicts young people mourning another young person, and Leonato's aforementioned speech is really one of the most accurate assessments of the experience of bereavement I have so far discovered. There's no picture below the poem this time, in hopes it will be self-sufficient.
4th December 2019
This verse is penned to honour seventeen
(the number marking those I have now 'lost').
It explores several things that that may mean;
how much it might be gain as well as cost.
I do not do what's scorned by Leonato
and try to patch grief with poetic proverbs.
That does ring true for me, at least in part, though -
I do indeed seek solace in rhymed words.
How else, pray, might I hope t'articulate
the fact that all their mem'ries spur me on?
Yet (if I were to open the floodgates)
I'd fear all moderation would be gone.
If I'm always to be the one surviving
I feel I've a duty to keep thriving.
That does ring true for me, at least in part, though -
I do indeed seek solace in rhymed words.
How else, pray, might I hope t'articulate
the fact that all their mem'ries spur me on?
Yet (if I were to open the floodgates)
I'd fear all moderation would be gone.
If I'm always to be the one surviving
I feel I've a duty to keep thriving.
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