Wiping Away The Tears

The stars disappeared from the sky tonight,
for a time, and the clouds sent only rain.
It soaked quick my face, neck and shoulders,
washing with it the salt of long last grief.

Thunder rumbled then, inserting the reminder,
the time had come to loosen my grieving posture.
Having seen it now through all four seasons,
I shook it free, allowing healing to take shape.

Building strength like a new moon set waiting,
I ached to pierce the thick curtain of midnight.
Great circles rearrange themselves and find no end,
this ending, too, marked the spot to begin again.

The clouds dispersed and my tears were replaced,
by stars against a night sky map, far above my head.
Gazing up and out, I studying hard this cosmic path,
and set my feet to dance, this life a circle spinning.

 

"Wiping Away Tears" is a Native American ceremony and traditional rite of passage which cleanses and heals, after loss, allowing for the continued ancestral bond, the ultimate gain, a continued relationship in the spiritual sense.

It's a painful lesson to grieve too long, destroying the bond that was held in life, obliterating its very nature with pain and anger ongoing.

I wrote this piece some time ago, at approximately the one-year mark of a painful loss in my life. I figured the one-year mark was a good time to "wipe away tears" so that I could see what was beyond the grief I had suffered in the physical loss of someone dear to my heart.

Upon completing that year-long, concerted grief process, and in "wiping away the tears," I felt I had arrived at the all-knowing and ongoing life-sustaining place where those beyond us still reach into our hearts.

What I didn't realize is a year, was too soon, and that for all my efforts, my original attempts at "wiping away tears" were being done with clenched fists.

As I rework this piece, another year or so beyond that line, I see that "wiping away tears" takes shape in many moments beyond death, and not just one final time.

With every single goodbye, I am more acutely aware.