May 6, 2023
“There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
None of us can endure silent grief. Keeping our pain hidden is not courage. Courage is saying to another, “I’m hurting.” Courage is saying to someone — a friend, a priest, a counselor and God — “Help me.” We have to articulate our pain and share our suffering and accept compassion.
One of America’s greatest poets, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, lost his wife Fanny at 44 in a tragic accident that left him scarred physically and emotionally. A month after she died, Longfellow wrote to his wife’s sister Mary: “How I am alive after what my eyes have seen, I know not. I am at least patient, if not resigned; and thank God hourly — as I have from the beginning — for the beautiful life we led together, and that I loved her more and more to the end.”
It was 18 years before he could articulate his loss in the poem “The Cross of Snow.” Of his more than 1000 poems, it was the only one that expressed his grief, in 14 short lines.
***
I cannot hold my sorrow within me in silent anguish. I will try to share it with another.