Of Death and Grief
Poems for Healing and Renewal
S T Kimbrough, Jr.
Foreword by
J. Richard Watson
Of Death and Grief
Poems for Healing and Renewal
Copyright © 2018 S T Kimbrough, Jr.. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-4372-9
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-4373-6
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-4374-3
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“In these piercingly honest poems occasioned by the death of his beloved wife, Sarah, S T Kimbrough, Jr., gives unguarded voice to his grief. This is not easy reading because these poems force us to face not only the death of those we love but our deaths. These are searing poems, but in a strange way they are beautiful.”
—Stanley Hauerwas, Professor of Theology and Ethics, Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina
“In these 33 poems by S T Kimbrough, Jr., I found a depth of love, grief, passion and power that poetry alone can convey. My heart was melted and my resolve to live fully and die well was strengthened. The journey of life and death—grief and loss—is artfully presented. This little volume will bless and benefit many.”
—Thomas R. Albin, Director of Spiritual Formation and Congregational Life, The Upper Room Ministries, Nashville, Tennessee
“Kimbrough writes of the reality of the death of his wife in poems that express grief with emotion, tears, and faith. His acknowledgement of the enduring love of God and of his own love for his wife is based on the grace given by God in times of hurt, grief and loss. His poems also tell of the fact that even within ‘grief there is hope,’ comfort and assurance of God’s presence.”
—Joyce D. Sohl, Laywomen-in-Residence, Scarritt Bennett Center, Nashville, Tennessee
“I am moved by Kimbrough’s ability to translate the many feelings that go with death and loss into words that he is now sharing with others. I am sure these poems will be a comfort to those who read them. They also model for others the power of writing to access inner strength and wisdom during a time of grieving.”
—Peggy J. Kinney, Hospice Bereavement Counselor, Duke Hospice Bereavement Services, Duke Home Care and Hospice
Dedication
The author expresses deepest appreciation to his deceased wife of fifty-nine years, Sarah Ann Robinson Kimbrough, who in life and in death enriched his life with the fullness of beauty, art, and love, which his words can never adequately describe. This little volume is dedicated to her loving memory.
For Sarah
Though eight score years her life did last,
its final ending came too fast!
She laid her lovely body down
with pain and suffering as a crown.
Mercy with grace abridged her years,
and took her from the vale of tears.
Her gifts of kindness, love, and art
live on for ever in the heart.
God, her soul’s eternal Lover,
round her let your angels hover.
S T Kimbrough, Jr.
Foreword
When S T Kimbrough Jr.’s wife Sarah died after a happy marriage of fifty-nine years, he sought, as all who have lost loved ones do, to try to come to terms with what had happened. He did so by writing the following poems. They record the emotions of a strong man almost overcome by grief, holding on to whatever comfort he can find. Sometimes that comfort came by putting his emotions into verse, trying to find words that would express his grief, the dreadful lying awake in the night, alone (that lying awake is memorably explored here in “Sleeplessness, Grief’s Torturous Friend”). Sometimes it came from the consciousness of something else, a mysterious feeling that somehow the response to death is related to love, and the memory of that love is all-consuming, even in the face of death. Memory, as Kimbrough writes in “Grief’s Redemption,” is like a dove, the gentlest of birds:
Grieve on, brave heart, for in grief
there is hope, there is belief
that memory like a dove
alights on the heart with love.
The pain of parting is terrible; the memory of the moment of farewell is so painful, a moment that is captured here in the restrained simplicity of
It was fifty-nine years ago
that I saw her for the first time.
A month ago I saw her for the last time
and kissed her lips for the last time as she died.
Memory and pain and love come together. As Emily Dickinson put it:
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
The feeling of disaster and loss at the end of a beautiful relationship will never go away. And yet there is gratitude for what has been, for the mystery of the last days, for the care received against the inevitable process of dying, and for the presence in the room of something other-worldly in the wonder of the final precious days and hours. And then comes the reality. One of these poems records the attempts of others to console, seen against the misery of turning the key in the front door. When they say “How are you,” they ought to know how hard it is, each day to enter an empty house, but
The simple words, “You’re in my thoughts”
suffice beyond all measure.
These poems indicate something that we all know, but often lack the courage to explore, the intimate relationship between love and grief: that the more one loves, the more one grieves when that love is brought to an end by death. And yet, as these poems show, love continues to exist, in the continued presence of the beloved in the mind and the heart. As one of these poems says:
Give thanks for love, for being—
for life, feeling, and seeing.
“For being.” The phrase is simple, yet exactly right. Just “being” is a gift that we need to remember to give thanks for. And somehow, that love continues through all the accidents of life, and through the final moment of death. It is not easy to say how this happens. We may believe in heaven, and that we shall meet again on another shore and in a greater light, or we may not. But whether or not we have such a belief, there is a sense that love continues beyond the last embrace, or the last kiss on the forehead. Death is a farewell, but one in which we carry with us the knowledge that parting is in some ways impossible. It is like the end of Sarah Doudney’s beautiful hymn, “Sleep on belovèd, sleep, and take thy rest”: “Good night! Good night! Good night!” Doudney’s note reminds us that the early Christians were accustomed to bid their dying friends “Good night”; and that hymn carries with it the thought that has been a part of the encounter with death for more than a thousand years: Requiescat in Pace, “Rest in Peace.” And