(Ira, Suzanne and their son Andrew)

Thirty years ago, when I met my husband Michael, we were invited to dinner at the home of my friends Suzanne and Ira.  I had known them since the mid-70′s but it was Michael’s first time meeting them.  Ira was at that time into Chinese cooking.  We walked in and after introductions, Ira brought a homemade Chinese dumpling from the wok.  “Taste this”, he said to Michael, popping the dumpling into his mouth.  Michael was beaming. “I like this guy”, he said after swallowing the tasty morsel.

That was Ira – hospitable, warm, generous, a great cook and host, a good listener who could hear both what you said and what you didn’t.   His aesthetic flair showed up in his wonderful photographs, the jewelry he bought Suzanne for special occasions, his garden and the lovely home he and Suzanne created together.  He was fun, with a sense of humor that definitely had an edge but not malice.  He had a way of making everyone in his inner circle feel that “all will be well”. I think that was also one of the qualities that made him a good consultant to the business owners he helped.

Ira died on Aug. 21, 2009.  At this first anniversary approaches, I’ve thought of him more often and felt his absence more sharply.  When that happens, my thoughts go immediately to Suzanne.  If I’m missing Ira, what must it be like for her?  Unimaginably difficult, I know, though I can’t begin to fully grasp what she’s gone through.

4 Ways To Help Yourself When A Friend Dies

1. Let your sadness and loss open your heart to empathy.  Who else is feeling this loss or one like it?  What comfort or help can you offer them?

2. Identify the qualities you miss in the friend you’ve lost and find ways to embody them.  I’m working on bringing Ira’s joie de vivre into my daily life.  It seems the best way to honor his life and to remember him.

3. Turn your love and attention back to those you love and be kind to them.

4. Let your loss lead you to live more fully than ever. Rather than deadening you, let it make you more awake and aware of the precious and extraordinary gift of life you still have.

Mary Oliver’s poem “In Blackwater Woods” tells us that love is the only answer to loss,
She does such a good job at the start evoking the desolation of grief that the poem can seem only sad.  If you hang in there (it’s short), you’ll see that she ends with both love and letting go.

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(American Primitive)

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/In_Blackwater Woods.html

Shanti, Shanti*, my friend.

*(Sanskrit – the peace that passes understanding)