A Mother Is The Portal By Which

I Was Not Raised With Religion, And I Had No Faith Before My Mother Died. On The Other Hand, When She Died, I Did Not Immediately Feel She Was "gone." I Don't Believe She Is In Something Like Heaven, But I Also Feel That We Don't Understand Much About The Nature Of The Universe. So I Hold On To That Uncertainty, At Times.

Yet The Story Of Orpheus, It Occurs To Me, Is Not Just About The Desire Of The Living To Resuscitate The Dead But About The Ways In Which The Dead Drag Us Along Into Their Shadowy Realm Because We Cannot Let Them Go. So We Follow Them Into The Underworld, Descending, Descending, Until One Day We Turn And Make Our Way Back.

Suddenly It Was Fall, The Season Of Death, The Anniversary Of Things-going-to-hell.

Relationships Take Up Energy; Letting Go Of Them, Psychiatrists Theorize, Entails Mental Work. When You Lose Someone You Were Close To, You Have To Reassess Your Picture Of The World And Your Place In It. The More Your Identity Was Wrapped Up With The Deceased, The More Difficult The Loss.

Faith Does Help Mourners Survive Their Loss, Some Studies Suggest; But I Imagine One Still Struggles.