I’ve been reading some Emily Brontë poems lately, and have thought about grieving and dementia in relation to her poem Remembrance. The danger of grieving is that the dead can become more real to you than the living, and you can love them more in death than when they were alive, somehow take more notice of them. And what can you say about someone who is dead, that does not sound trite? Even someone who has been dead for years is still missed, and one occasionally wonders what they might have said or thought about something that is happening in the now.  There is merely a void where once there was life, yet they can still seem real. With the symptoms of dementia, I suspect the void is more significant because we place more importance on them only once we have lost them. As with grief caused by a death, there are often so many things we feel sad about having taken for granted with the person who has died. With dementia, this happens too, as so often we find that living has got in the way of so many things we have been meaning to do for years. It is often only with the diagnosis of dementia or any other terminal illness, that we start to place a focus on those things that have more meaning to us. One line in the poem, Dare not indulge in Memory’s rapturous pain, suggests to me that memory of the dead is painful, and in that same way with dementia, we dare not indulge too much in remembering that we once remembered. Faithful indeed is the spirit that remembers is another line within this beautiful poem that resonates with me about the loss of remembering. As with anything, interpretation is personal, and I could spend days trying to write a deeper and longer review relating to the topics of grief, loss and dementia in this poem, which I might just do, but for now won’t bore you any longer!

Remembrance

(a poem by Emily Brontë)

Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,

Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!

Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,

Severed at last by Time’s all-severing wave?

Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover

Over the mountains, on that northern shore,

Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover

That noble heart for ever, ever more?

Cold in the earth, and fifteen wild Decembers

From those brown hills have melted into spring:

Faithful indeed is the spirit that remembers

After such years of change and suffering!

Sweet Love of youth, forgive if I forget thee,

While the world’s tide is bearing me along:

Sterner desires and other hopes beset me,

Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!

No later light has lightened up my heaven;

No second morn has ever shone for me:

All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given,

All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.

But when the days of golden dreams had perished,

And even Despair was powerless to destroy,

Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,

Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy;

Then did I check the tears of useless passion,

Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;

Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten

Down to that tomb already more than mine.

And even yet I dare not let it languish,

Dare not indulge in Memory’s rapturous pain;

Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,

How could I seek the empty world again?

Ps. I wrote this and thought I had posted it on 18th August, but it seems I left it in the Drafts folder, which means technically I have missed a day in my goal to post a new blog every day since September last year!! I guess this means I’ll post two today.