So there was a question brought up on Tuesday that I would like to explore with you.
And the question was,
How do we let go of loved ones?
And I don't know if I have a very good answer for this question.
Because facing the loss of a loved one is painful.
It's hard to say goodbye.
There's the loss of the person in your life,
And with it is the grief of that loss.
And these experiences of grief and loss have to be known and felt in the body.
We can't jump into letting go without experiencing these emotions.
And if we don't allow for them,
It's a pretty big bypass.
I think that poetry speaks to this particular loss better than I can.
I love this poem that I received as part of my training at Zen Hospice Project.
The author is unknown,
And it doesn't even have a title.
When I die,
If you need to weep,
Cry for your brother or sister walking the street beside you.
And when you need me,
Put your arms around anyone and give them what you need to give me.
I want to leave you something,
Something better than words or sounds.
Look for me in the people I've known or loved.
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live in your eyes and not on your mind.
You can love me most by letting hands touch hands,
By letting bodies touch bodies,
And by letting go of children that need to be free.
Love doesn't die.
People do.
So when all that's left of me is love,
Give me away.
I think that's how we let go.
It's like the sharing of benefits that I read after practice.
We give so we can receive,
Receive so we can give.
So we've received the gift of this person in our life,
Sometimes for decades and decades.
And we're learning to give that love away to others in the absence of the person who we most loved.
I think the teachings point more towards how we let go of our identity to the person that we've lost.
You know,
In some ways we're clinging to our identity in relationship to the person who has passed.
The husband,
The wife,
This is the identity,
The partner,
Or the caregiver,
Or the friend.
You know,
There's this experience of I've been part of a we in a very singular way,
In an intimate way.
So now,
Who will I be?
Who will I be with the time that I have left?
Who am I without this person I've shared my life with in such close proximity?
This is another poem from the poet Henry Van Dyke.
I am standing upon the seashore,
A ship at my side,
Spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her,
Until at length she hangs like a speck of a white cloud,
Just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says,
There,
She is gone.
Gone where?
Gone from my sight,
That is all.
She is just as large in mast,
Hull,
And spar as she was when she left my side.
And she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me,
Not in her.
And just at the moment when someone says,
There,
She is gone.
There are other eyes watching her coming,
And other voices ready to take up the glad shouting,
Here she comes.
And that is dying.
Maybe it's like this.
I don't know.
I do know that it brings a lot of comfort.
And that is what we need when our hearts are broken.
Broken open in this way.
So how do we let go of our loved ones?
It begins with allowing for grief to move in.
And to make room for it so that it can move.
And then learning to give our love away.
The love that we have and the love that we need.
So I offer this for your consideration.
And I thank you for the question.
