Table Of ContentHEALING
AFTER LOSS
Daily Meditations
for Working
Through Grief
MARTHA WHITMORE
HICKMAN
To Bill and Sudie
Contents
Permissions 5
Introduction 7
January 1 1
February 1 32
March 1 60
April 1 91
May 1 121
June 1 152
July 1 182
August 1 213
September 1 244
October 1 274
November 1 305
December 1 335
About the Author
Other Books by Martha Whitmore Hickman
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Permissions
Grateful acknowledgment is given for permission to reprint
from the following:
“Annie Allen” by Gwendolyn Brooks. From Blacks by
Gwendolyn Brooks. Copyright © 1991. Third World Press,
Chicago, 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Healing More or Less” by Jim Cotter. Cairns Publications,
Long-wood Publishing Group.
“Two Tramps in Mud Time” and “Haec Fabula Docet” by
Robert Frost. From The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Ed-
ward Connery Lathem. Copyright © 1936 by Robert Frost.
Copyright © 1964, 1975 by Lesley Frost Ballantine. Copyright
1947, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc. Reprinted
by permission of Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
“Memorandums” by Edward Hirsch. From The Night Parade
by Edward Hirsch. Copyright © 1989 by Edward Hirsch.
Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Originally
appeared in “The New Yorker.”
“After the Drowning” by Mary Jean Irion. From Holding On.
Copyright © 1984 by Mary Jean Irion. Heatherstone Press.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Lost Son” by Theodore Roethke. Copyright © 1948 by
Theodore Roethke. “In a Dark Time” by Theodore Roethke.
Copyright © 1960 by Beatrice Roethke, Administratrix of
the Estate of Theodore Roethke. From The Collected Poems of
Theodore Roethke by Theodore Roethke. Reprinted by permis-
sion of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell
Publishing Group, Inc.
“All Souls” by May Sarton. From Collected Poems 1930—1993
by May Sarton. Copyright © 1993 by May Sarton. Reprinted
by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
“Elegy for My Father” by Mark Strand. From Selected Poems
by Mark Strand. Copyright © 1979, 1980 by Mark Strand.
Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
“Dear Men and Women” by John Hall Wheelock. Reprinted
with permission of Scribner, and imprint of Simon &
Schuster, from Dear Men and Women: New Poems by John Hall
Wheelock. Copyright © 1966 by John Hall Wheelock; copy-
right renewed 1994 by Sally Wheelock Brayton.
“For Dudley” by Richard Wilbur. Excerpt from “For Dudley”
in Walking to Sleep: New Poems and Translations. Copyright
© 1969 by Richard Wilbur; reprinted by permission of Har-
court Brace & Company.
Introduction
After the loss of a loved one there is, at first, a great buzz of
activity as we make arrangements, as family and friends
come together. There is comfort in the close press of friends,
in shared tears and hugs, in gifts of food, in remembering.
Religious services give meaning and hope as the community
gathers around us in love and support.
But then the services are over, relatives and friends go
home, and we are left to enter a new and strange land—a
land where one of the persons who has given meaning to
our life is gone.
Now there are spaces in the mind, spaces in the days and
nights. Often, when we least expect it, the pain and the
preoccupation come back, and back—sometimes like the
rolling crash of an ocean wave, sometimes like the slow ooze
after a piece of driftwood is lifted and water and sand rise
to claim their own once more.
This process goes on for a very long time. For years, not
for days or months, if the loved one has been close. Some
losses—a child, a spouse—are never “got over.” But if we
are wise and fortunate and have the courage and support
to tread the hallowed ground again and again, the loss will
begin to lose its controlling power. We will be able to choose.
We will be able to walk back from a danger zone
if we need to, or save it for a time when we feel stronger.
We will be able to feel the spray on our face without a fear
of drowning, even to savor the taste of the salt on our lips
because, in addition to the poignancy of loss come the rush
of love for the one we have lost and perhaps a sense that in
the mystery of the universe, we still inhabit that universe
together and are tied together in a love that cannot come
untied.
“What is essential does not die but clarifies,” wrote
Thornton Wilder. And again, “The greatest tribute to the
dead is not grief but gratitude.” Eventually, we will find our
way through this particular “valley of the shadow,” and
while there may always be a tinge of sadness, there will
come a sense of our own inner strength and our ability to
rejoice in the life we have shared, and to look toward a future
in which the loved one, though not physically present, con-
tinues to bless us.
Each of us speaks and writes out of our own history of
sorrow and gladness. My life as a writer and as a human
being has been heavily affected by my experience with
grieving—in particular, by the death of a sixteen-year-old
daughter who, on a bright summer afternoon while our
family was on vacation in the Colorado mountains, fell from
a horse and died. It was a long time ago. Grief takes its time,
and for a while it occupies all our time. I know whereof I
speak.
So it was with a particular sense of being in the right place,
of congruence with my own life, that I undertook this book
of meditations for those who grieve. The meditations follow
the course of the year, but you can start anywhere—in any
month, on any day. They are brief because, particularly in
the early stages of grieving, our attention span is short, and
a seminal thought will serve
us better than an extended discussion.
I am grateful to many people for making this book pos-
sible—to the family and friends who upheld me when I was
most vulnerable; to the spiritual and religious communities
who love me and remind me of who I am, who I have chosen
to be.
And in particular, now, my thanks to my editor, Lisa
Considine, who first approached me about taking on this
project; and to the hundreds of people whose words—in
chance conversation, in letters, or through the printed
page—form the flash points for these meditations. To ac-
quaint, or reacquaint, myself with these sages has been a
rich adventure for me. And I hope that, together, we will be
able to help those who grieve to move with resoluteness and
courage and with trust in a gathering light on the long road
to recovery and reclamation of life.
Nashville, Tennessee
August, 1994
