6:47am.
Sunday. January. It is two minutes since I opened my eyes. One since I learned a friend has passed away.
Her husband’s words, the magnitude of his loss, flow for the woman he loved, in front of my eyes in the half light like a river. As ever, his words are truth. Love. Poetry.
Grief’s deluge is undeniable. In the years, months and weeks past he often described her illness, her coming death, as a mugging, and every notion of the statement rings truer now than ears after a bomb.
Yet he honours, amidst all of it, every lovely place and time the light has caught a drop of her life. No matter how small. Every line in his remembrance of her - every abundant description of her being, her life - has been threaded as equally and vividly with beauty, humour and tenderness, as they are with the stark brutality of her passing. There’s goodness. And truth. He finds it. Always finds the living, even in the debris of death.
I reach for the empty space in the navy sheets beside me. Two separate griefs meet in the darkness under my ribs.
Not for the first time, I am reminded by my friends that love - true love - fights the good fight. It fights hard and shows up even when it’s shattered. It has strength beyond reason. Courage beyond measure. It tells the truth. Makes itself louder than fear and speaks even when its voice shakes. The truth of true love is that it’s covered in scars and mud and is still somehow the most beautiful thing in the universe.
I think of her. The years had never dulled the sharp, curious sparkle in her blue eyes. The wisdom in them. The warm, authentic compassion of her smile. I call my mum to make sure she knows, feeling the tears pool. The tumble of them into my hairline. My sister is already there, she tells me. Flew in yesterday. Part of me settles. There's no one better to be there - no one, to meet hearts in grief, with love, authenticity and wisdom - than her.
An image of the person I knew shines in my head, at her brightest. She was the same spirit at heart the day we met twenty four years ago as she was to the end: a human made of more quiet courage and tenacious kindness, of generosity and wisdom, than there are words to articulate.
We rarely saw each other in the last decade or more, but still. I never forgot, and ether of the world feels less without her. As though a great light has gone out here on earth to be lit somewhere far more heavenly. But I have no fear that where she is now, she is beyond healed. No fear that she has peace surpassing all understanding.
Because above all, to be known, encouraged and loved by her was to experience a profound and authentic expression of faith. Her faith. Real faith. She held fast to the promises of God in every storm, including this one. I have no doubt He has held her in equal, unshakable measure.
For you, Kim.
Now the night is passed.
All that is frail, unkind with loss -
I shift it loose, this rope from
my earthly mooring.
I pass from light to light;
the darkened veil has come and gone.
Stars and constellations honour my bones.
They sing what remains, to rest
beneath a summer sky of tears and midnight songs.
"Go now," they say.
"We will tend these treasures now."
"She is not here."
I am not.
I am in the arms of the sun and Son;
His good and faithful welcome lights my way.
The lamp of eternity
breathes gold fingers between
the lashes of new eyes.
Breezes race over skin, through trees
like children through a fair.
My own bare feet
fall soft beside my King.
In time,
out of time,
beyond time,
I have walked with servant tread,
this shining, savage path
to Paradise.
The sole of my soul at peace
On a road paved mightily with stones rolled away.
My tribulations are done,
my every enemy fallen;
as faintly as a breath, have they vanished.
Here will I rest,
with peace for a pillow in the wildflower quiet.
For all is well with my soul.
Here will I wait for my Love,
with the One who is Love.
Surely His grace is a sea made
to draw my Dear One near
when the finite, grief-blown winds
of all that is mortal turn his head,
like mine, for home.
Here will I remain, shining, curious and bright
on the shores of all that is surely good.
But until that tender hour,
Beloved,
and even then.
A gilded tumble of curls unfurl.
Dry ground blooms again
In a new creation where
desolation has no place.
Birdsong crowns the darling morning
in which I have awoken -
this endless new day.
In sparkling peace,
I turn my face to the warmth
of my Shepherd’s sure and boundless heaven,
veins like rivers
in which strength and light will swim forever.
And I will wait,
Summer-sky-on-ocean eyed.
For here as it was on earth,
I too am no stranger to being waited on
by both King and Companion,
the loves of my lives.
© Erin Brown 2025
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