Saturday's Sayings - "There is No Name..."

Saturday's Sayings

There is No Name...

The child that loses a parent is an orphan.

A man who loses his wife is a widower.

A woman who loses her husband is a widow.

There is no name for a parent that loses a child,

for there is no word to describe this pain.

~Author Unknown

*****

"We lose the person we were..."

Grief is a strange journey. Each time we embark upon it, it is as though we have never taken its roads before....For we do not only lose another person; we lose the person we were with the one we lost.

~Patricia Monaghan

*****

"I think of nothing but my grief..."

Alas! I am so unhappy

that I cannot speak my misery

except to say that it's hopeless:

despair is already at the door

to throw me to the bottom of the well

where it seems there is no escape.

My eyes are throwing out so many tears

that they don't see the earth or the sky,

there is such an abundance of weeping.

My mouth is lamenting everywhere,

from my heart nothing better comes out

than sighs with no relief.

Sadness with its great efforts

has made my body so weak

that it has no energy or power.

It is like one of the dead,

so that seeing it from the outside,

one loses all recognition.

I have nothing left but the sad voice

that I hear myself crying with,

lamenting the terrible absence.

Alas! I have lost the happy presence

of the one I lived for

and saw with such good heart!

I am sure that his spirit

reigns with his ruler Jesus Christ

contemplating the divine essence.

How much will his body be ordered

the promises of the Holy Writ

will make it live in heaven without doubt.

While he was healthy and strong,

faith was his comfort.

His God he possessed by belief.

In this lively faith he died,

which has brought him to the very sure port

where he has the knowledge of God.

But alas! my body is banished

from him with whom it was united

since the time of our childhood!

My hope also is punished,

when it finds itself stripped

of his, full of all knowledge.

Mind and body are full of mourning,

so much that they are changed to laments;

only weeping is my face.

I cry in the woods and in the plains,

to heaven and earth I complain,

I think of nothing but my grief.

Death, who has played me such an evil trick

to beat down my force and my tower,

all my refuge and my defense,

has not known how to ruin my love

which I feel growing night and day,

which my sorrow makes grow and advance.

My pain cannot be revealed

and it is so hard for me to swallow it

that I lose all patience about it.

I must not talk about it any more,

but think about going soon

to where God has put him through his mercy....

~Marguerite d'Angouleme

*****

"Grief fills the room up of my absent child..."

CARDINAL PANDULPH:

You hold too heinous a respect of grief.

CONSTANCE:

He talks to me that never had a son.

KING PHILIP:

You are as fond of grief as of your child.

CONSTANCE:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,

Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form:

Then have I reason to be fond of grief?

Fare you well: had you such a loss as I,

I could give better comfort than you do...

O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!

My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!

My widow-comfort, and my sorrows' cure!

~Shakespeare

~Patricia Monaghan (1946- ), in The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog

~Marguerite d'Angouleme (also known as Marguerite de Navarre) after the death of her beloved brother, French king Francois I, whom she had once rescued from captivity in Spain.

~Shakespeare (1564-1616), King John, Act III