The Grief Machine

If you have been bereaved, you will know that numb feeling when it seems there is some form of thick glass between you and the world.  You can see the world, but live on your own, the walls invisible but nevertheless totally solid. The Grief Machine was written a week or so after my father died when I felt I was a shell with a vast hole bored through me.  I was never sure that 'vortex' was the best word, to me it felt as if I had my insides gashed out leaving totally emptiness and that's all I could find to try and explain it.  'Vacuum' seemed wrong, as that implies nothing, and your emotions swirl, just removed from everyone else.  A lot of the time you do seem empty, operating like an automaton, going through the motions because to let your feelings out would be to tumble out of control, and as you seem to have no boundaries or edges, such a thing is quite terrifying.

One of the awful things that can happen when you are in this state is people being frightened of your emotions, and turning away from you.  It is frightening enough being overwhelmed by grief, but fortunately my experience has been most people understand this.  Nobody can make it better for you, but just small words and gestures are enough to keep you going whilst you come to terms with the ambushes that attack despite your best attempt to be brave and grown up. 


The Grief Machine


‘I’m so sorry for your loss’
The kind people say,
Knowing that the words drop into the vortex of grief
That has been bored through your soul.
Every smile and every hug and
Every happy memory
Moves the settings of the Grief Machine wider.

But when does the drilling begin?
Did it rush through the job
As he breathed his last behind those blue curtains.
Gouging out the spirit in swift sharp strokes.
Or does it work quietly
Chipping away at the foundations of your life
Ready for the final push
To empty and numb.

‘Great love can only end in pain, there is no other way,
Nature’s cruel like that’
He told me as a comfort.
He was right.

The Grief Machine may be God’s need for obeisance
But our drive for love is stronger.
Only the wicked hate,
Only the evil steal hearts for their own delight.
The good give and love and lose.

But every tiny drop of kindness finds the bottom of the pit,
Soothes the gashes of the soul
In tiny cooling drops.
As it fills the rawness slowly vanishes,
It joins and knits
Leaving scars
For the fortunate ones
Who have been loved by the good.

26/01/2009 05:38