Tag Archives: joy

Tell Me When….

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This piece has been a long time coming, with lots of revisions and changes, because in it, I’m not just talking about me and my feelings and experiences, but also of the feelings of those around me – at least to some extent. I want to treat them gently and with respect. So here goes:

I was talking to a close friend the other day about this whole process: grief and healing, loss and recovery. He said something that I had been suspecting but as I have never been through this before (at least not at such an intimate level as having lost my wife) have been wondering if I should expect something more.

He said that he thought that the way I had engaged in my grief, embracing the great variety of issues and emotions, then processing them through my writing, had expedited the whole experience. That’s how I feel.

Another friend told me that I had “grieved well.”

“Processing” is a clinical word for such an organic, spiritual progression; and progression is what it is, as I look back over the months. I am now at a place where I can look at Ngaire’s things with a sense of love and gratitude rather than heartache. I know that there will always be moments that will overwhelm; I’ve seen that in others, sometimes even after many years.

As you’ve probably deduced from reading these blogs, I talk to people a lot; I like to have “sounding-boards”: people whom I trust to not only reflect back to me what I am saying – to help me see it more clearly – but people who will also give me another perspective that I may be missing.

In a different conversation to another friend, I said that I felt that it seemed much longer than the nine months since Ngaire died; in looking back and reading my blogs again, it really felt like years. In fact, if I had to put a number on it, I’d say, about two and a half years.

I have started going through her things now, to pass them on to the people that I know she would love to have them, to keep some for my boys and their prospective partners, and to keep some myself. I have had help, but it has been an almost pleasurable experience.

I am a little surprised at how quickly this time has arrived. There is none of the dread that I had been anticipating, none of the melancholy or even grief. I have some sadness, but also some joy in knowing that I will be sharing some of her things with those she loved.

I have heard stories of spouses who never address these things, who are perpetually in a state of waiting for their loved-one’s return, so the slippers, the dressing-gown, the favourite shirt, dress, jacket, earrings….whatever, remain for the owner to come and step back into them. What I am saying is that I now know that she is not coming back. I referred to this in my last blog regarding dreams and how they were an indicator of me coming to terms with her not being here. Now that I know, I will be doing what needs to be done.

 

As usual, I have been doing a lot of pondering; I have wondered about this whole epoch of “moving on” i.e. stepping into the next phase of life, as it were, whatever that looks like. These are words that run through my mind: newness, uncertainty, promise, apprehension.

In my last blog I wrote of the cost of being in this place now, to me personally, and to my family. Of course, I realise that it is not helpful to stay in that headspace.

Some years ago, Ngaire and I invested significantly in property in Brisbane. Rather than an investment, it turned out to be a massive burden that we carried for years, which ended up costing many times more than what we had invested, just for us to eventually be free of it. But, we couldn’t stay in the pain and loss of that experience. We had to move on and leave it behind.

While the analogy is inadequate, I feel that there is a clear sense of moving on now; that it is not helpful to remain in grief and loss, nor do I want to any more.

I have even noticed a difference in my response to others when they ask how I am. Normally, it will be something like, “I’m doing fine, thanks,” or “OK.” Now, I actually find myself saying, “Good.” I’m pretty happy about that.

This whole process has, however, been intense; those of you who read these posts regularly will know that I have embraced the grief, engaged in each issue and experience and not let go until I have wrung every last drop from it.

I spoke of conversations earlier. Some folks that I know who are church pastors in New Zealand were part of a recent weekend away with my church community. Hamish told me about a lady in their church whose husband had died some time before. She had met another guy whose wife had also died under similar circumstances. They ended up together and, as part of their commitment to each other, gave permission to have their own individual “space” around birthdays, anniversaries, etc., that related to their lost partners. I thought that that was beautiful and showed a depth of understanding and love that can only be appreciated by someone who has walked the path; someone who is not intimidated by the intimacy that you had with another, who is brave and loving enough to allow such freedom.

So, sitting in this classroom of life, looking out at all the students who are parts of me and my questions, I can see a boy about three rows back, with his hand up, a quizzical expression on his face, along with a slight sense of embarrassment as I give him permission to talk.

“Sir, does that mean you are moving on?”

“Good question, young man,” I cautiously respond.

This is an area that Ngaire and I touched on, though not in any depth. She recognised that, should she not make it through, I was still young enough to consider life with someone new.

Her illness lasted over many years, and the possibility of her death was never far from my thoughts; in my own heart, I had made a commitment long ago, that if Ngaire died, I wouldn’t even consider a relationship with someone else until my boys were out of school; that would have been an unfair stress that young hearts may not have been able to cope with. As I’ve mentioned before Eddy – our youngest – finished up at school just a few days before Ngaire died.

Since then, I have laid out the journey on these pages: the various aspects and issues associated with the path of grief and loss; I have wrestled and wept, struggled and somehow come through. Now, I stand here on open ground; the cloud has parted, the sun is shining and there is hope on the road ahead. I feel good, not just OK. I don’t doubt that there will be moments which will still overwhelm from time to time, but generally I feel strong and at peace. There is, however, a consideration that I find a little unusual, possibly even perplexing.

I have noticed over the years that part of this process of “moving on”, specifically about beginning another relationship, is almost a taboo area, about which many people have strong opinions. I have seen people, including myself, who have been hurt and angry when someone close has begun a relationship with another, sometimes within a time-frame that may be considered too soon. From my pondering, I throw out a couple of things to consider:

In looking at my own judgement of others in the past, I realised that, even though it may not have been conscious, I had made an assumption of, “How can they just forget their wife/husband like that?” It is almost as though I had felt them to be discarding or cheating on their spouse.

One thing I hadn’t allowed, is that the journey of the bereaved person is one of which I had no context to help me even remotely understand. The depths plumbed by a grieving spouse are simply beyond those who haven’t been there. Plus, how that person deals with and processes the pain of their life is entirely their business and I have no right to judge them.

For me personally, I know that I will always carry my love for Ngaire with me and, like the couple of whom I spoke earlier, hope that this love be respected in any future relationship.

Of course, people who actually have a right to be concerned or emotionally jarred are those who are closely related e.g. children and siblings of the one who has died. A father or mother beginning a new relationship can be hurtful to a child, if not handled properly – even years down the track. So I think that it is reasonable to expect, particularly if close relatives or friends are involved, that there be sensitivity and lots of conversation.

My boys for instance would and should be the first to know; in fact, I would not consider moving forward in another relationship without them being OK about it themselves. Which brings me to my next deliberation: perhaps some people may be upset or judgemental about a bereaved person moving on, because they have not been able to process their own grief, or have avoided visiting the pain. I suspect that some reasonably close to me may be in that situation and, in my pondering have realised that, apart from a gentle conversation, there is nothing I can do about it. I cannot process their pain for them, nor do I believe that it is my responsibility to wait until they can cope.

It’s a weird, new world and in some respects, this whole process is a metaphor of life, which teaches me that even if I walk in love, there will be pain for others, no matter how sensitive I am. We are each responsible for our own lives, and often our judgement of others hides a deeper need within ourselves.

If all of us are to move on, we have to deal with the pain gently, but thoroughly and leave it behind. Coincidentally, I read this quote last night:

“Don’t get rid of the pain until you’ve learned its lessons…hold the pain of being human until God transforms you through it. Then you will be an instrument of transformation for others.” – Richard Rohr

For that to happen requires us to look into the pain, not as our enemy, or something to be shunned, but as that which will help us to live more fully, more alive. I am convinced that those who walk through the pain are those who know true joy. I think that that is why, when someone asks me how I am, I can now say, “Good.”

Life, but not as we know it…..

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On the 15th March, 1991, after much revisiting, renewal and rebirthing, Ngaire and I were remarried. We had been separated for over five years and divorced for three of them.

After the first six months of our separation, the dust began to settle. We found that a kind of civility grew between us because of our desire to have a unified approach to the parenting of our son, who was only two and a half when we parted; we needed to agree on many things.

One of the things that was important to us both was that neither of us use Jordan, our son, in a manipulative way in order to push our own side with respect to the breakdown of our marriage; we purposed to make him feel as loved as possible, and to do this would require us to keep our “issues” for private conversation; it also meant that we needed to do our best to resolve them so as not to have ongoing tension between us.

After some time it dawned on us that, of all our friends and family, we were the ones who supported each other the most. Of course, there were friends who were brilliant. I can think of a couple who stood by me closely; Ngaire also had a couple of friends who loved and supported her; but many others only had opinions or advice; many simply didn’t know what to do – particularly with me, as I was the “bad boy” in the break-up, having dissolved more or less into a jellyfish, numbed by alcohol, totally lacking in self-belief or vision and carrying the full weight of responsibility for a broken marriage.

Ngaire was deeply hurt; for years she had felt that she didn’t know who the stranger sleeping next to her was. When she discovered that I had been unemployed for over a year and had spent most days drinking, it all made sense.

In retrospect, for a couple as broken as we were to make any kind of positive decision about parenting, borders on the miraculous. I guess the thing that I think is really significant, is that our desire to have a unified approach in our love for our son was the catalyst in our communication.

Love rears its head again. What a powerful force; or are we wrong to even think of is as a force? Perhaps it is that which holds everything together.

However, even though Ngaire and I were civil to each other, that was a long way from getting back together. Whenever anyone asked either of us if we had considered that we might do that, the answer from both of us was always an emphatic, “No!”

It was occasionally followed by the qualifier, “Well, unless God does a miracle.” But neither of us really believed that; in fact, after a couple of years we met for a coffee and agreed that the marriage was dead, so what do you do with a dead thing? Bury it.

The divorce was amicable in every way; but I do recall a tremendous sense of loss as I sat in the courtroom and the judge brought his gavel down.

Shortly afterwards Ngaire decided to pursue some art opportunities overseas. She took Jordy with her. I stayed and worked, putting life back together.

When Ngaire returned with Jordy after eight months, she wanted to meet with me. I cooked dinner for her one night and she began to tell me the other part of her reason for going away. She said that she had always heard that it takes two for a marriage to break down, so she wanted to do some searching of her own heart, to see how – or if – she had contributed in any way. She asked God to show her.

Incidentally, I know that I am not sharing any more than she had always been comfortable to share; in fact, I think that in a lovely way, she was proud of the way her desire to be “clean” had born fruit.

I remember that night so clearly. She went through the things that she felt had been as instrumental in bringing our relationship down as my actions. Then she asked my forgiveness.

I had asked her forgiveness many times, and she had graciously given it; but when she asked forgiveness of me, I recall a moment of bewilderment, as if something completely loud, irrational and irrelevant had happened in the room, then a light shone on a deep hidden pain within me, that I hadn’t even recognised. By this time, Ngaire was in tears and asking me again to forgive her, and as I did, the pain surged up and out of me in a rush of tears.

There were many tears that night and much healing. The freedom that followed for both of us was amazing, as if chains had fallen off; and the love that was dead and buried had been suddenly and astoundingly resurrected, but not in some second-hand, band-aid way. It was new, exciting and fresh.

We spent a lot of time in counselling over the following couple of years, getting some understanding on our own and each other’s motivations, rebuilding our lives together on a solid foundation.

That night of forgiveness was almost exactly twenty-five years ago. It was miraculous, replete with healing and resurrection, and from it new lives were created. Jordy was seven when we remarried , and was an integral part of our wedding service. Our vows were said to him, almost as much as to each other, because his family was coming back together too.

Though we had hurdles and differences to overcome, our lives were rich and full; we were blessed with restoration in every way: two more beautiful boys and another twenty-two years of marriage that never saw us short of love.

Because one person chose to sacrifice self for the search for truth, so much beauty was born. I will always be indebted to her for that and for the fact that she was ruthless in the search for personal truth; I am convinced that this was how she loved so well.

I am publishing this now, rather than on March 15th, because the days and weeks following our night of forgiveness were the newly plowed and sown field from which the rest of our blessed lives were harvested. As I said, it was at this time of year.

A final word: to ask for and extend forgiveness is an acknowledgement from your heart that love is the ultimate yardstick for life. If we choose not to forgive, we limit our ability to truly love anyone, ever. If we want to live in peace, forgiveness is not an option.Image

What would she think?

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Sometimes it seems that I’m trundling along the railroad of life when a friend, up ahead, pulls a lever that shunts me off onto another line. The other day I had lunch with one such, whom I hadn’t seen since before Ngaire went. He started by saying, “I guess you must be over people asking how you are….”
There is a kind of celebrity attached to being the “other half” of one who was so well and widely loved. It is not the kind of fame that one seeks. But I do appreciate when people ask how I am; mostly I answer with, ”OK”, and then search the eyes to see if this is someone who is able and willing to listen to something deeper.
In a similar way, whenever I start to write, I second-guess myself. Wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve is a saying that, in our society, carries a weight of impotence. You hear it often, usually used in a derogatory way about someone sharing his or her feelings or life issues. Most often, in the political arena, it is used to denote – ever so carefully – a sign of weakness, or of someone not being adequate for the task (but, the qualification is that they’re a nice person). If he is a man, then he is certainly not acting like a man. A man does not express his true feelings; we are taught to cover them up.
I don’t doubt that most of the women who are reading this whole-heartedly approve of a man making himself vulnerable in this way, but I suspect that a lot of the guys might feel pretty uncomfortable. If that’s the case, then I’m sorry guys; I have discovered on this path, that the only way to effectively love and be loved, is to make oneself vulnerable.
So, what is vulnerability? I’ve been tossing this around for a while. Put simply, it is openness, being willing to be known for who you are, warts and all. Within a community – a group of friends, club or church – vulnerability can be our gift to one another. In many respects, it is the only way we can connect with another person, soul-to-soul. When we protect ourselves and don’t allow others in, we are often betraying the fact that we are hiding our shame or sense of inadequacy that if others saw what was within, we would in some way be diminished, humiliated or not accepted. I suspect that machismo mostly hides frightened little boys.
A couple of weekends ago, my dear friend, Mick, talked to a group of us on this very subject:
“Let’s open ourselves up to the gift of vulnerability; start with one or two. Begin to open up; build trust; let down your defences; take some risks….”
Our vulnerability connects with others in a way that no teaching or opinion can because it connects with another’s heart. This is how we read stories and watch movies. Usually the storylines we love the most revolve around the characters that we can most relate to – connect with. Every superhero has a flaw. Why? Not for the sake of the story, but so that the audience can relate to their humanity; otherwise we wouldn’t care about them.
This has been the failing of a number of “competition-type” lifestyle shows. It’s not the format that people care about so much, but the characters. The successful ones don’t build their audience around the competition itself, but around the characters involved, their personalities, feelings and vulnerabilities. Once you can relate to a character, you’re hooked on the show, because you care about what happens to them. Conversely, if the characters are nasty or “stand-offish”, we quickly lose interest and don’t care about what happens, ratings drop and the show is pulled off air, if we’re lucky!
Vulnerability – openness – is also the way that you give others an opportunity to connect with you and give them the chance to be open with you. Your vulnerability creates a “safe place” for others to be open themselves.
So, why go there? Why does it matter? What is so good about being vulnerable with one another?
The way I see it working is, as a two-way street, but usually that will mean someone has to take the first step. Remember that your openness creates a safe place for others to be open themselves, and being vulnerable is the first step towards emotional healing. I am convinced that we wouldn’t, as a society, spend a fraction of what we do on psychologists and counsellors if we practised openness in our close relationships. It is also the entry point for going deeper into life and love; the more open we are prepared to be, the deeper we can go; and there is treasure to be found in the depths.
Are there dangers in practising openness? Sure. Others can perceive it as weakness or that you are “using” openness as a means of getting sympathy or attention – which you may well be. You also make yourself vulnerable to being hurt emotionally, should others take offence at or criticise you.
That’s why it’s important, like my friend Mick said, to start small, just one or two close friends whom you already trust. Open the conversation; start talking about the beauty and depth to be found in openness and vulnerability. Gossip is the enemy of trusting relationships, so be a safe place for your friend and ask them to be that for you. Most close friendships are already at that place, so explore the path together. Open yourself up to the gift of vulnerability.
To some extent, I didn’t mean for this blog to be about this subject, as you can probably tell from the title, so let me be open with you.
I was driving to work the other day, listening to some old music from my youth that pushed all the right “feel-good” buttons (Chicago – Saturday in the Park, for those who need to know). I had the windows down and was singing along, actually feeling a real sense of joy. But even as I contemplated that, my thoughts turned to Ngaire; would she be hurt that I was having a “happy” moment; what would she think?
I began to feel a little guilty, almost ashamed that I could allow myself this indulgence. But, we had walked the deep roads together, and I knew that she had no doubt of my love for her, and I certainly had no doubt of her love for me. Our mutual happiness was one of her greatest desires. So I turned up the music and sang along.

Pictures

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I was having coffee with some friends, when one said to me, “I like the beard; you should keep it.”

I hadn’t consciously been working on a beard. When I got home, I went to check it out. As I stood before the bathroom mirror, I realised that I hadn’t spent any time looking at my face recently, almost as if I had some kind of hesitance in engaging the eyes, for fear of what I might see there. I had become a little unkempt, though not too bad – kind of like a front lawn that had grown a little too long and with edges in need of a trim. Normally, I would keep things under control, but I had clearly been preoccupied with something. I say “something” because it’s not what you might think.

While my loss of Ngaire does account for a huge part of my thought life in a day, I am still living life: going to work, cooking meals, washing clothes, seeing friends, laughing and making small talk. What the unkempt man in the mirror underlined was that normal had, in many instances, become something that I had to make a conscious decision to engage, e.g. “I think I’ll make dinner now”, or “maybe I should have a shower before I go to work.”  It is almost as if the chip that looks after routine has a malfunction and that part of my brain is floating in cyberspace somewhere – preoccupied with floating! Maybe that’s why the unexpected has such a sudden impact on me emotionally.

I’ve talked about this before; it’s common to all who grieve and understood by most. We hold it together most of the time as we continue the job of rebuilding and working with the new shape of our lives. Then something appears – usually entering through our senses, catching us unawares – that folds space and time so that we are instantly transported back by a smell, a picture, or a sound. There have been many such moments over the last four months but the other day, one in particular showed me another aspect of this journey.

Most of us have a presence on Facebook; for those who don’t, I hope you will bear with me. Ngaire still has a presence there and I see no reason why that should ever change. I had actually made a decision not to visit her Facebook pages yet, in the same way that I have decided not to sort through her clothes, personal items, etc. It’s too confronting, too painful still; but I know that the time will come.

Remy, my precious twenty year-old son, who is living overseas, did go to her Facebook pages, to look through the pictures that she had put up there, many of which were tagged with my name. When Remy “liked” them, or made a comment about them, I was notified on my phone, and unwittingly drawn into reading her comments about pictures of me and of our family.

Ngaire nearly always had something good or encouraging to say about everyone she knew. That was one of the things that she did well, but when I read the comments of love and adoration that she had for me in these pictures, I was undone. In instance after instance, I had reinforced to me the one central, glorious, beautiful thing that was gone from my life – her love for me.

As stupid as it sounds, I hadn’t fully realised that it’s not just her presence, her touch, conversation, smile, laughter, or any number of things that relate to her being present that I miss the most; but the love that captivated me, helped sustain me and made me feel that I could do almost anything, was gone – relegated to the past – and the loss is palpable.

I know that there are those who will say that her love lives on in me and the boys and in the hearts of those whom she loved; I understand that sentiment and it is true to a point, but the active adoration with which she endowed me, that was central to the peace of my heart and my home and helped shore up my character, is no longer a vibrant life-force in my world – in my boys’ world. This is loss and, as I ponder, it is also key to understanding the rebuilding. Now that I see the keystone is gone, again I sit pondering the precarious nature of this house in which I dwell.

If only we realised how central love is; it is the stuff of life. Without it, we merely go through the motions. It is that which holds life together, makes the weak strong and the poor, rich.

I am deeply grateful for the love of my boys, my friends and my family. Without that, I can’t think of one reason why a person would want to keep on living. With it, I have the mortar to rebuild.

Rehearsal

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Ngaire’s battle with lung disease stretched out over a period of more than twenty years – over one third of her life; and I had the privilege of walking with her through it all. For the first seven there was hope that it may resolve itself, but thirteen years ago, the diagnosis turned sinister – to pulmonary fibrosis – which is always terminal.

Over those years, my role was to love, support, care for, encourage and enable her to walk the path towards wholeness. We looked for healing, from the supernatural to the intensely natural: prayer, whole foods, herbal remedies, naturopathy and everything in-between. Because the prognosis was terminal – usually, at best three to four years – perhaps, in retrospect, there was a measure of healing in some of those. After one visit to Bethel Church in California in 2005, where Ngaire was prayed for, she was completely symptom-free for eighteen months. Two subsequent visits, however, yielded no such fruit physically. All of that is to help paint the picture that this was a long journey, full in many varied and challenging ways.

One of the things that we learnt early on in the process was that the medical profession wasn’t very good at giving you bad news. In many ways, they were often quite brutal and many times we found ourselves clawing our way out of a pit of despair (I should say, however, that Ngaire’s doctor for the last three years was an exception to this experience; we found him hopeful and supportive, even when things went sour).

I found myself needing to be Mr Positive because of this, always pointing the way to the positive aspects, always trying to provide her with an anchor point for hope. The reason for this is the real help that hope provides, emotionally, psychologically and physically. The alternative – despair – soon carves a slippery slope to destruction in the often desperate heart of one with a terminal sentence. Even in her last thirty-six hours, Ngaire hoped and believed that after her sedation and intubation, she would wake with new lungs from a transplant. I am relieved that that was in her heart rather than hopelessness and despair.

Of course, my own personal journey was different. I purposed to maintain her hope, but would, myself, at times, visit dark places, writing of hopelessness and the feeling that my days were a rehearsal for what life would be like without her. This would happen particularly when she was convalescing elsewhere or on one of her several hospital visits. Without her presence in the house, the whispers would often be that my actions of preparing meals, doing washing and ironing, making lunches, organising cleaning rosters amongst the boys, were all practice for the future when she would no longer be with us.

I couldn’t talk to her about this, which is more difficult than I can tell. In almost everything, Ngaire and I would seek each other’s opinions, thoughts and feelings. I think the word that I used in an earlier blog was symbiotic. Since we remarried in 1991(for those of you who don’t know, we were separated and divorced for five years – that’s another blog), our marriage was totally different. We had almost a singularity in our approaches to things. We would use ineffectual words like “team” and “agreement” but it was much more. I cannot tell how many hundreds of times I would pick up the phone to call her and she would be calling me, and vice versa; we would often be jointly thinking of the same things or people and begin to speak about them together at the same time.

Much of this kind of thing is not uncommon in close marriages, but we had fought some hard-won battles to bring us to where we were. Part of our remarriage vows said, “I give my life to you as an open book”. Now, here I was with all of these feelings of hopelessness and despair, and I was unable to tell her, because I knew that it would be destructive in her physical battle. One of us needed to be paddling the boat, and that was usually me. I have learnt that this is often what happens to a carer. I saw it in my own father as he took care of my mother through many years of Alzheimer’s. Despite my urging he found it difficult to open up about his struggles – which were deeply evident in his demeanour – and mostly kept it bottled-up, to his and our great detriment; he died shortly after mum. However, I am immeasurably grateful for those few friends in whom I could entrust the deep, dark things, who supported, prayed and help strengthen me for the road.

So where does faith sit in all of this?

Over the course of Ngaire’s illness, faith changed shape enormously. In fact, to enlarge the metaphor, it became an almost unrecognisable monster at times, as we waded through the mud of “unlearning” what faith is.

As an aside, I am bemused by atheists, some of whom are my friends, who in their own “evangelism” presume that I, or others who think similarly, have not grappled substantially with these issues of the existence of God. It is arrogance to presume this and flawed thinking to not allow another possibility. What is the difference between that and a rabidly fundamentalist Christian? I digress.

Let me tell you some of the things that I believe I have discovered about faith:

  1. It is not about me having an expected outcome.
  2. It does not dictate that I must badger God until he gives me what I want.
  3. It is not about having an expectation that everything will be peachy.
  4. God is far bigger than any box that I may create for him or indeed, any understanding to which I may come.
  5. God can do things any way he likes.
  6. Suffering is an integral part of the journey to joy.
  7. It is O.K. to doubt.
  8. Faith is purified more by unanswered prayers than answered ones.
  9. Yes, I am loved.

I was talking earlier about Ngaire’s and my closeness. I don’t want to give the impression that it was all sweetness and light. To reach the gold you have to dig the dirt; at times we could be downright abrasive with each other: I have some memorable journal entries! But, generally….mostly…..entirely…we were deeply in love.

I wrote this about eighteen months ago, after we returned from California; Ngaire had taken a downturn and was staying at our friend, Moira’s, place.

It is the Oneness

Unwell, she convalesced in another place

Alone, deep in the night,

I stirred beside her, felt her warmth

And the air move past my face from her breath,

Tenderly, we enmeshed the arms and legs

Of our souls in gentle embrace,

And communed.

From the other possibilities of mind-time,

I called myself to reason, lying suspended,

Sliding around consciousness.

That reason again challenged life

That this is a dream,

That she is not here,

That I am alone.

I turned my back and swung my feet to the floor,

Melancholy in such sudden solitude,

Until the voice of resonance

Within informed me,

It is the oneness.