March 2025 Newsletter
Loving Life, Even When You Think You Can’t
The Thing Is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
by Ellen Bass
There’s something about being known that speaks into the essence of who you are and how you belong.
There’s been plenty of times that I wondered how to keep going. Have you felt that way too? When things seem just a tad too heavy for your strong back to carry, when everything hurts more than you think it should? I know that place. I’ve been there. I’ve asked, “How can a body withstand this?” just like Ellen Bass asks in the poem. The answer is always the same.
You stand it because you must. Because you take life in your hands with all its ugly grimaces and uncomfortable groans, and you say, “You are what I have. Let me make something from this.” And you do, because what is the alternative? What choice do you have?
If that feels a little idealistic, let me agree. Life won’t wait around for everything to be perfect before you can go on living. You have to live through the going on, to laugh, to love, to remember, and sometimes, to listen to your body and take shelter wherever or however possible. Then, the next day, you get up and do it again.
On Friday, I’m driving to North Carolina to attend the celebration of life service for my friend, Dawn. I met her when she came to Rockvale Writer’s Colony as a resident writer. Had it not been for my job and her application, we would never have met and never have found such a deep and beautiful friendship. Though I grieve the loss of her, I am joyful for the heart of her, the things we shared, and the things we learned through that sharing. How can I not be grateful and joyful and love the life that allowed us to meet and bond?
I am joyful through pain, and glad through suffering. That’s the definition of living, when you live long enough. The tiny things become the big things. Everything is a sign to keep living – bluebirds setting up habitation in the birdhouse again, March winds stirring tree limbs with green buds, the warmth of the sun on my back as I clean up the garden, stillness in the forest, thunder inside a dark night, moon breaking through clouds. I live and love because I hold the face of life in my hands – a plain, ordinary, unsmiling face – and see beauty simply because life IS beauty.
In Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poem titled, “How,” she says this:
I think of how
in my most lonely moments
some strange beauty has wandered
into my vision or woven its singular
song into my ears and I can’t help
but feel infused by life.
Infused! Internalized. Ingrained. Instilled. Life!
I will take you, Life. I will love you, again.
Blessings,
Sandy