gravestones and bones

a space dedicated to death, ancestral veneration and graveyard wandering.

[aqua-regia009]

Illustrations by Theodor Kittelsen (Norwegian, 1857-1914) for Svartedauen (Black Death), 1900

[paper-wounds]

Fortesa Latifi, from The Truth About Grief.

[coldwateronly]

[loveridden1999]

adult grief by louise glück

[letterful]

— ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI, translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh.

[wovi]

*

vicki rivard

[gouged-doll]

two of the tarim mummies, buried approximately 3,800 years ago

[pnglove]

By Christina Bothwell

[transformational]

“gravestone in pet cemetery, lisbon” (1998) by nan goldin

[lena-oleanderson]

also a poem from the new, unreleased collection. very possibly my own all-time favourite.

[mayahart]

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE FLEABAG — 2.04

[redstonedust]

the worst part about grief is that it feels like the world should be horrendously earth shatteringly changed, and to an extent it IS but its also the same. to everyone else it's just another tuesday. the world moves on. you have to go grocery shopping.

[gael-garcia]

Painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by William Carlos Williams

[broken-academia]

i read CS Lewis’ A Grief Observed one time years ago and i’m still not recovered from it

[broken-academia]

— A Grief Observed: part i-ii, C.S. Lewis x

[giffingthingsss]

I need y'all to understand that he wrote this famous passage in the middle of her brief remission -

'Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose.' 'Don’t put your goods in a leaky vessel.' 'Don’t spend too much on a house you may be turned out of.' There is no man alive who responds more naturally than I to such canny maxims. I am a safety-first creature. Of all arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as “Careful! This might lead you to suffering”. There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

[entanglingbriars]

A Grief Observed is Lewis' most vulnerable, authentic work and is more worth reading than everything else he wrote combined.

[wizardarchetypes]

adjusting to a world where I’m not the middle sister anymore

[wizardarchetypes]

nobody should apologize in the tags for relating to my grief & sharing their own. i can’t speak for every poet but i write poetry as a continuous conversation with the world and everyone in it and it goes both ways

[letterful]

— BILL KNOTT

[anxeious]

[oncewild]

thinking about this bit from an article by Ann Druyan in 2003:

“When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me – it still sometimes happens – and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous – not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance… That pure chance could be so generous and so kind… That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time… That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful… The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived.

That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday.

I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.”

[journalofsolitude]

What Is Otherwise Infinite by Bianca Stone