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As a countermovement against those in the field of psychiatry who wish to classify grieving that endures beyond a certain length of time as pathological, I offer a selection from my “Grief Chronicles,” a series of poems in which I grieved for my late wife, Dr. Daphne (Dede) Socarides Stolorow, over a ten-year period following her death 21 years ago today at the age of 34. I continue to grieve.
I
Endlessly I search
here and there
in this corner of my life or that
in your face or in mine
for some trace of Dede
but she is nowhere to be found
except in the ache of her absence
and in the torture chambers
of my dreams.
6/20/92
II
A glacier of sadness
frozen within me.
A little piece breaks off
and melts into tears,
cleansing.
Ice immobile
in a hollow sea
melts no more.
Dede fades.
I am dead.
Birthday.
Two years nearly
since she died.
I turn fifty this November.
No big event
in Iceland.
11/1/92
V
I dreamed that Dede was learning a new language,
preparing for travel to a distant land.
I wanted to go too.
But I am left behind,
bilingual, lost,
A Man Without a Country,
frozen between two languages
and two worlds,
between the lands of the living
and of the dead.
12/11/92
VI
It took two years, nearly,
to give away her clothes.
I keep a few precious things,
holding on to distant treasures
slipping further from my grasp,
our closet a half-emptied shell,
a mocking mirror of my heart’s remains,
its hollowed-out darkness,
a grim reflection
of the Dark Nights of My Soul.
12/22/92
IX
Today I gave her ashes
to the sea she loved so much,
my loss its gain forever.
Goodbye my love.
The tide swooped in
and washed her from the death-black rocks
as I sat watching
with the stillness of a fallen gull
adding a few salty tears
to her new home.
Goodbye my love.
4/2/93
X
Today I visited her
as I do from time to time.
“Is it okay to feel happy again?”
I asked with nervous apprehension.
“Oh yes,” she said,
holding my little-boy face
softly between her hands,
“I want that more than anything.”
The warm glow of her smile
melted back slowly
into the sun-drenched sea.
Goodbye my love.
4/23/93
XII
Each anniversary
(this the fifth)
I visit the sea
where I scattered her,
aging atheist
conversing with an angel,
her smile,
knife-wound in my heart,
still warming.
2/23/96
XIII: Transformation
It was a little scary
when I visited her last night,
shimmering midnight moon
lighting up the black, rocky home
where nine years she lay scattered,
pummeled by crashing, high-tide waves.
On the walk back to my car
after our yearly conversation
I figured out my life:
In its remains
I would give to others
the gift Dede gave to me.
Through me
her loving smile
will warm and brighten
those I love,
lifting us both
from the dark world of death
into the glow of life.
2/24/00
XIV: Time
Ten years ago
my sweetie died.
What’s in a decade?
2/23/01
XV: The Leather Jacket
I wore the jacket
she picked for me
for 18 years
till it was torn and tattered,
leather showing holes,
frayed lining falling,
and I looked the homeless one
her dying left me.
When it was time
I left it
on a park bench by the sea
for my successor,
another homeless warmed
by Dede’s gift to me.
4/8/01
Copyright Robert Stolorow
