Let the dead have their own life?

This poem had a line that has remained with me ever since, "so you can let the one you have lost alone, so that you can let the one you have lost have their own life and even their own death without you." Let the one you have lost have their own life? Let the dead person have their own life? It sounds kind of strange. I believe there is life after death, but it's all a mystery to me. I don't imagine them going about life in some similar way to what I do every day. But what do I know? Nothing about that!

David told a story about a dream he had about his dad, who had passed away. In the dream his dad was busy doing something (I can't remember what) and seemed almost too busy to talk to David. This morning I finished reading A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis*, and at the end he wrote about something that seemed like a visit from Joy (his wife, whose death and Lewis' grief is what the book is about), although he would not use such concrete words to describe it. He wrote:

And more than once, that impression which can't describe except by saying that it's like the sound of a chuckle in the darkness.

And:

It's the quality of last night's experience--not what it proves but what it was--that makes it worth putting down. It was quite incredibly unemotional. Just the impression of her mind momentarily facing my own...

Not at all a rapturous reunion of lovers. Much more like getting a telephone call or a wire from her about some practical arrangement...No sense of joy or sorrow. No love even, in our ordinary sense. No un-love. I had never in any mood imagined the dead as being so--well, so business-like. Yet there was an extreme and cheerful intimacy.

Business-like. Intriguing, isn't it?

WINTER GRIEF

Let the rest
in this rested place
rest for you.

Let the birds sing
and the geese call
and the sky race
from west to east
when you cannot raise
a wing to fly.

Let evening
trace your loss
in the stonework
against a fading sky.

So that
you can give up
and give in
and be given back to,
so that you can let
winter
come and live
fully inside you,
so that
you can
retrace
the loving path
of heartbreak
that brought you here.

So you can cry alone
and be alone
so you can let
yourself alone
to be lost,
so you can
let the one
you have lost
alone, so that
you can let
the one
you have lost
have their
own life
and even
their own
death
without you.

So the world
and everyone
who has ever lived
and ever died
can come and go
as they please.

So you can
let yourself
not know, what
not knowing
means.

So that
you can be
even more generous
in your letting go
than they
were
in their leaving.

So that you can
let winter
be winter.

So that you can let
the world alone
to think of spring.
…
WINTER GRIEF
From
THE BELL AND THE BLACKBIRD
Poetry by David Whyte
APRIL 2018 © David Whyte and Many Rivers Press

*C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, HarperCollins, c. 1961. Pp. 71, 73.