Still Hurting

It's all too sad.

Watching another's sorrow

is - for me - more painful

than bearing one's own sadness.

The Rainy Day

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary...


Extract from The Rainy Day by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Beyond Tears

Over the past few weeks I have encountered cause to look at the world through eyes filled with tears.
One of the most important people in my life is hurting - deeply, and I can not make it better for him.
Given just cause, the depth of sorrow is an emotion with which I am no stranger. Over two years ago, in the darkness of compounded loss, grief and despair, I wrote a piece which began ...

'We do not see clearly through eyes filled with tears...'

I no longer think this is true; on the contrary, I now believe that deep emotion allows us to tap into a clarity that would otherwise elude us. Allowing ourselves to feel the pain, to embrace the suffering - so painful though that may be - enables us to measure the extent of the injury. Only then, will we be able to fathom sense of what has become of us; only then, will we grow; and only then, can we begin to move forward.
The sorrow will prevail but we will endure.

The Toys

My little son, who looked from tearful eyes,

And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,

Having my law the seventh time disobey'd.

I struck him, and dismiss'd

With hard words and unkiss'd,

His mother, who was patient, being dead.

Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,

I visited his bed,

But found him slumbering deep,

With darkened eyelids, and their lashes yet

From his late sobbing wet.

And I, with moan,

Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;

For, on a table drawn beside his head,

He had put, within his reach,

A box of counters and a red veined stone,

A piece of glass abraded by the beach

And six or seven shells,

A bottle of bluebells

And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art.

To comfort his sad heart.

So when that night I prayed

To God, I wept, and said:

Ah, when we lie at last with tranced breath

Not vexing Thee in death

And Thou rememberest of what toys

We made our joys

How weakly understood

Thy great commanded good.

Then fatherly not less

Than I, whom Thou has moulded from the clay,

Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,

'I will be sorry for their childishness'.

.................................................................................Coventry Patmore

The Little Black Boy

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And, pointing to the East, began to say:

"Look on the rising sun - there God does live,
And gives his light, and gives his heat away;
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday

And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

And when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish; we shall hear His voice,
Saying: 'Come out from the grove, my love, and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice'."

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;
And thus I say to little English boy,
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

I'll shade him from the heat, till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will love me then.

William Blake