In and of itself, absence is, by dictionary definition, "the state of being away" or "the time or duration of a person being away": in any of these circumstances, the direct implication is that of "not being", and really, this can only be applied if there is someone other than the person who is "absent" thinking about the person who is not present; so then, one cannot be absent if another does not think about the one who is presumably absent, n'est ce pas? And what about the person who is absent? Does he/she think of him/herself as absent? Probably not in the same way as the person/people who they left behind.
God. Semantics and logic.
Just made me think of that worn out cliche: Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
In the case of someone's death, I think it ought to read: Absence makes the heart feel hopeless, because, in the grief process, isn't that what it truly feels like? I know when we lost Noah, it was the hopelessness of the circumstance that weighed the heaviest on us - the knowledge that we had lost a son - a living, breathing human being in the first moments of his life - who we knew could never return to us. And in no way, could we see the hope in it.
I feel and sense this same hopelessness in the people with whom I work in the counseling field and with close friends and families who have lost loved ones. The hopelessness abides in those darkest of moments, and continues to prevail well beyond the time when most others have wished you would just get over it and move on. Grief and healing have no set timeline and healing, I have discovered ironically, is conditional on our understanding of hope.
And so, came the time when we met Hannah. She was, perhaps, the most confounding (and welcome) little thing to ever have happened to us. Not that Haley and Heather weren't as precious in their arrival, but Hannah's birth yielded the most perplexing questions and forced us to consider an unerring truth; that if we hadn't lost Noah, we never would have met Hannah. It boggles the mind and wrenches the heart.
But what it does demonstrate is clear: hope prevails. It is hope upon which all human beings hinge their present and future; hope for ourselves, for our family, friends and others. And despite the most dire of circumstances, we must all look to find hope in all things. So easy to suggest, but, like the act of forgiveness, this is so very difficult to do. But I am convinced that it is hope that we must all seek, no matter what our situation. Each of us needs to find a path to hope when we feel such utter despair.
And when I wheel back to the earlier notion of absence, I can only think of Noah this way: that he may be "away", but that he has left us something so very precious in his leaving - a daughter and a sister - and a clear, unmitigated understanding that we will all be together again - soon.
Noah is absent, but not gone. So, too, are your loved ones "away", but hope will lead you back to them.
Below: a gift that I have only shared with a few - until today.
Paul
***********
Noah
When I think of him in my arms,
solid in his skin
and quiet,
like in sleep,
undisturbed by
life,
I think that he lives some place
where Time sits on gossamer threads,
diaphanous and unrestraining,
and he visits me, unnoticed,
and smiles at my grief, curious.
And he sits on my shoulders
at suppertime and looks at his
sisters, and hugs them with his eyes,
loving their pretty faces, seeing himself;
And when they cry in their sleep,
he marvels at the glistening tears,
they shed for him, like diamonds,
and he kisses them, inquisitively.
And he presses himself to his mother's breast
feeling her agony, knowing the empty womb
from which he was born.
And I know these he never questions;
and he attends to her,
and caresses her heart,
and speaks to her soul,
and whispers secrets that need only be shared
between a mother...
and her lost son.
Paul Toffanello
1994
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