Song of himself

This was also my October:

            Odd how grief affects people...

            One week ago, a member of one of the families in my church died.  I'd never met him.  I'd never even heard his name.  And yet within days, I, like the other church families who care about the ones he left behind, had been tossed haphazardly into a maelstrom of emotion.  Because I had been introduced to two members of his family: two younger brothers.  My staunchest supporters for a Frisbee ministry from among the youth.  Two boys, still in high school, who had lost their hero.  Don't tell me he wasn't.  I count my older brothers among my personal heroes and have since I was small.  Let's call a spade a spade. 

            I realize now why I felt everything so much.  Liam and Cody are very personable, caring boys, and they had made me feel welcome, like I belonged and that I was going to be able to contribute and make a difference.  And now they were in pain.  When Cody hugged me at the funeral, though he was thanking me for something I'd done to try to help, I felt inadequate.  I wasn't tall enough or strong enough to give him the hug he needed to feel... his brother. 

            And awkwardly now, I grieve the way my ex husband grieved for my Grandma Leita, though he'd only met her once.  The empty, left out, I WANTED to meet you grieving.  Wanting to empathize but not knowing the words to say... but perhaps the universe has a different plan for me.  To listen.  To gently ask to hear the stories, and meet him that way, for there will eventually come a time when they want to tell stories again.  When it won't hurt to hear his name.  When they can laugh again.  I wonder, absurdly, if he liked Frisbee, because his brothers do.  But until then, all I can do is be here to sit with them, nodding in familiarity if they cry and scream at God that it isn't fair that he's gone.  You're right, it's not fair.  It simply is.  I've been there. 

            So, one last offering from my word vault, and then I'm simply here to listen: my favorite selected verses from Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself'.

This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger,

It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make appointments with all,

I will not have a single person slighted or left away...

Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? 

This hour I tell things in confidence,            

I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you. 

I know I am deathless,

I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass,

I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night. 

I exist as I am, that is enough,

If no other in the world be aware I sit content,

And if each and all be aware I sit content. 

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roof of the world. 

The last scud of day holds back for me,

It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,

It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun...

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. 

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood. 

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you. Top of Form