Dear Heavy-Hearted Day,

A letter....

Photo by Louis Galvez on Unsplash

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Dear Heavy-Hearted Day,

Here you are, again. Came swooping down from out of nowhere and alit yourself firmly on my shoulders. Who said you could come around like that, an uninvited guest? I know of no-one, here, living their contented breaths, who’s extended any invitation to you. Yet, here you are…

Oh, I saw you, in flight, far and away from here. Still, I wasn’t expecting your sudden hovering circles to yet again center over me, or to be more than a survey of my chest’s surface; an air held linger, only until prayer and hope and God changed your course. I wasn’t expecting you to find place to perch. Yet, here you are… Here you are giving survey for residence as the unwanted squatter.

And, now...oh, now, how I know all too well what it feels like when you make preparations to build your sorrowed nest in permanence within the branches of my heart. Who said you could, Heavy-Hearted Day? Who gave permission? Not, me. Because, I know, I know how it feels, your dreaded nest building.

Your hooked beak, bearer of bad news, begins the brooding. The chest gets swollen with every poke, prod and jab made by your penetrable placement of grief’s sticks; each are losing ends of a jousting lance. Damage to the heart muscle sustained by the addition of your kneading talons tamping down those sharper edged points of truth, and bleeding begins in keeping with response to more unsettling news. Oh, I know, I know how you consummately, yet callously, construct.

Your steady, steady work affects the neighboring lungs. Breath is held, caught, with each added detail you gather and bring in to fill the gaps. All cause for deeper expansion of airways as they produce more frequented gasps that catch and don’t let go. How much it feels like being held underwater while attempts are made to drown the body’s breathing force; pressure becomes distressfully intense as the real renders rapid pain pulses and the created blebs threaten to burst at any moment. Any moment between the prayers, the pleas and all of the repeated ‘this can’t be-s’.

You go and return, go and return, go and return in your gathering of dire details. On each debarking, the forceful flaps of your wings leave darkening eyes that can’t help but drip, and drip and drip. There is no stop to the drops of dread even as one tries to control what one cannot—the unmanipulable reality revealed by verifiable facts, or the unretainable flood gates which hold back the watery woes that have no place—oh—no place to go.

Heavy-Hearted Day, how many trips until your fashioned nest is done? Once complete, how long do you plan to stay, exactly? Are you okay to share space with Hope? You do know Hope is here, right? Have you met? Do you know her? Look! My dear Hope still points up to higher atmosphere; my prayers haven’t ceased. Might you decide you don’t want to settle in here after all?

Silently, you give no answers as you fidget with Time, rearranging your found grief and all its related details. Pick up. Examine. Reposition. Pick up. Examine. Reposition. Pick up. Examine. Reposition. Obvious is your stalling, your contemplating, this should I stay or should I go decision. Truthfully, though, what else are you doing, if not planning to stay? Hear me, Heavy-Hearted Day, no one wants you to.

But, you’re here…for the time being and, in this moment, your unvoiced presence reminds just how long, how well, you’ve known this empathetic soul of mine; anything in this life has had the potential to summon you to me. Anything.     

Your head tips one curious eye to me and I know the answer to your unasked question. Yes, I have prepared my whole life for your visits, still, I’m always surprised when you enter my skies and am fully disappointed that you don’t just fly by. Oh, why won’t you JUST fly by?

Naturally, you’ve taken offense with that, as I feel you forcefully nestling deeper in. Under your heavy breasted weight, I feel you flex your talons in predatory finishing fashion as though to exert your worth, and convince of this right you feel you have, to stay immeasurably housed.

I know you think I shouldn’t mind, it’s only fair; I’m not the only heart you visit. Perhaps. If you weren’t such an unrelenting bully about it, maybe I would be okay with having you simply drop in for a quick visit. But there are no truly ‘quick’ visits, are there? You never just pop your head in for a fast minute. No…sometimes, rather most times, you do better-than-a-good-job of sighting me in with premeditated plans to produce significant scars. Those very times, you bring endings to the presence of someone: in their leaving, in relationship extinguished, or far more permanently—in death. You deliver to soul’s door the permanent shadow of loss and grief.

This month, August, brings summer light to those fading shadows of sorrow you delivered in full darkness 3 years back. The month our Mom’s light left the room.

Oh, Heavy-Hearted Day your ever presence, had finally begun to be delightfully dimmed behind the rays of the pleasant, the fond, the joyful—the most cherishable moments of her life. My words finally were able to be put to page since last they penned her obituary.

Yet, Heavy-Hearted Day you grievously keep showing up in our August skies and returning to build your heart-rending nests with seemingly yearly news of dearly departed friends.

This August 2024 the same and here you are again….Heavy-Hearted Day.

Today, it’s that.

All of that. Here you are returned from short migration, finding remnants of your old abode and you’ve begun reinforcing your nest, your home here in my chest. This day last year you arrived, this very same day, a year ago—you circled our skies in news of three friends losing their lives in a car accident. Sorrows three friends deep.

Today, it’s that.

Last night, August 6th, a young friend, just 53, took his last breath while surrounded by his beautiful wife of twenty-nine years, precious twin daughters just beginning life at 22, and his loving family and friends.

The heaviness within their hearts is only imagined by the muscle memory that remains in my own. Those from losses of mothers, father-in-love, brothers, great-grandson, aunts, cousin, grandparents and friends.

And, still….

And still, I cannot fathom the depth of their pain or expanse of their grief in these last days, in their waking to today and to tomorrow, and to the next, or in all their moments going forward.

Oh, Heavy-Hearted Day……why do you come, and why must you stay?

Oh,

Heavy-Hearted

Day……………………………….

Most Sincerely,

Wendy Gray

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“Jesus wept.”

John 11:35

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Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

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Though they may seem similar, there is a clear distinction between empathy and sympathy. According to Hodges and Myers in the Encyclopedia of Social Psychology, “Empathy is often defined as understanding another person’s experience by imagining oneself in that other person’s situation: One understands the other person’s experience as if it were being experienced by the self, but without the self actually experiencing it. A distinction is maintained between self and other. Sympathy, in contrast, involves the experience of being moved by, or responding in tune with, another person.”¹

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My dear all and sundry,

While today’s prose was not the piece I had intended to post, I was unable to finish the other while in the current lamenting place of my heart. Containment of emotion was not going to happen in order for the completion of the other piece. So, I went to blank page and let fall the words hanging from my heart.

My intended piece was on the human condition as inspired by the often addressed topics of the Beat Generation writers. Death, along with the subject of human emotion, is contained within the elements or definition of it. They are aspects of life contemplated within our questions about ‘the meaning of life’.

Many may think this somewhat ironic, that I was writing a broader piece on life’s meaning and suddenly became called to write something more specific to the topic. I thought so, too, at first. Then, as I finished…well, what I thought and felt was so much more DIVINE.

Death and the emotions related to loss are parts of this LIFE we have. We ALL will know someone who dies, and we, ourselves, will one day meet our own death. The gamut of emotions that occur in this LIFE, we will ALL experience in one form or another, in one way or another. These two, death and emotion, will always be a bond we have as human beings.

However, how we navigate through each is very individual.

With death we often sympathize and extend condolence to the grieving party. It’s our way, in this world, to say we are aware that a loved one has passed, and we acknowledge their grief. We even feel tearful sadness in their loss, even when the departed is someone we never met.

“I am sorry for your loss.”

Societally acceptable and expected, those words. We also attend funerals or memorials, send cards, include those grieving in our prayers, and begin to move forward. Unless…

Unless their passing and their loved one’s loss hits us differently. Then, we empathize, mostly. Unless…

Unless we have been so bonded to the other being that we feel within their passing, our own.

Still, most often, we sympathize. Then, there are those who hit a higher scale of experiencing emotion, and they empathize with every cell of their being.

In empathy, the heart is more than sad, it takes on the substance of far more than sympathy or condolence. The heart absorbs a plethora of extras because the empath has the ability to emotionally understand what the other person is feeling by seeing things from their point of view, and by imagining themselves in that person’s place.

We have all heard of putting ourselves in another person’s shoes, but empathy is more than that, it’s considering, at depth, the being in another’s position, with all that that entails; feeling as fully as we can, what they are feeling.

No matter the degree of emotion, or the depth of feeling, we ALL come to understand the permanence of loss and how that makes us feel; it is what makes us so very human.

I pray for all of us as we meet and experience death and grief, and get to know the circling, landing, and nesting of the Heavy-Hearted Day.

My deepest sympathies to each of you.

Many Blessings and MUCH LOVE,

~W-Gray

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1. The Psychology of Emotional and Cognitive Empathy, accessed August 7, 2024, https://lesley.edu/article/the-psychology-of-emotional-and-cognitive-empathy#:~:text=Empathy%20is%20a%20broad%20concept,helping%20others%20and%20showing%20compassion.