“The art of losing is hard to master” – Elizabeth Bishop

There is no conquering grief. No mastery. You submit. Pack away losses like trinkets of a lost childhood. Most of the time you submit crying in the fetal position.

When I feel grief, I think of Elizabeth Bishop. I feel pain, but I don’t know how it feels to open the hotel room door to find your fiancée dead as Elizabeth once did. I don’t know how loss intermingles with the cruel thought of knowing that your love took her own life.

The grief I feel now connects me to Elizabeth Bishop. I am too wrapped in shame to fully articulate the circumstance of this grief. It is along the lines of love, breaking up, letting go and jealousy. Amidst it all I am not entirely sure what is lost and what isn’t.

There is humanity in grief. I am inspired that Elizabeth could move with grief and still create art, to love fiercer, to live with disaster and pain. My loss does not come close to the intensity of hers. But I still feel.

The space of grief is so trammeled with pain I see myself reaching for stories to abstract the pain:

“I didn’t deserve her anyway”.

“He’s a gross pig who won’t respect her”.

My imagination turns to sabotage me. Creativity adorns her new lover with unassailable charm and wit. I imagine her with another and feel disgust. I hear the voice of need and scarcity blare between my ears like a wailing child singing songs of inadequacy.

I am not sure what I have lost. Her? Our future? My masculine pride? Grief still permeates like a smog of knives.

There is another voice. Newer, but somehow older.

“What’s on the other side of this pain?”

The various part of my selves, smitten with grief, collectively roll their eyes.

“What’s on the other side?”

There are two sides to a story and two sides to this chasm of grief. There is always something on the other side. Although I feel like I am in the pit, I know I will have to make choices not to get lost inside. No need to escape grief, but try to enlighten the pits with curiosity and openness. To accept grief rather than make it mine. Rather than transfiguring it to form crooked reflections of myself.   

Elizabeth Bishop did not have the luxury to choose to let go. I have the chance to say goodbye and give my blessings. Trust her and let go. Stick with the grief while it is present. Is there another side? Let’s find out. The best way past pain is through it. Either way you live with loss. After all, as Elizabeth Bishop concedes:

“The art of losing is not hard to master though it may look like (Write it) like disaster”.