The Good Grief

There’s a grief that’s clean — not painless, not easy,
But clean in the way that a wound healed the breezy
Way is clean: properly, fully,
The grief for the full life, the duly
Mourned and fully loved person who died
After the long life with the wide
And examined and well-finished quality.

He died at eighty-seven, in the spring,
After the long marriage, the specific ring
Of the life well-lived, the children and the grandchildren
And the great-grandchildren, the full linen
Closet of the accomplished life — the not-taken-too-soon,
The not-interrupted, the specific boon
Of the life that ran to its natural completion.

The good grief is still grief — clean doesn’t mean painless,
The specific brainless
Narrative that the long life makes it easier is not true —
But the clean grief has a different view
Than the grief for the truncated or the sudden —
The grief for the completed life, the sudden
Absence of the well-completed person.

The eulogy I gave was the honest one —
The full life told in the specific sun
Of the gratitude for the length and the quality of it,
Not the apology for the brevity of it,
Not the rage at the interruption —
The grief of the specific seduction
Of the long life honestly concluded.

And the grief itself is still enormous — don’t mistake
The cleanliness for the smaller stake
Of the loss, the eighty-seven years doesn’t
Reduce the size of the absence, it doesn’t
Make the chair at the table less empty —
But the grief for the ample plenty
Of the life has a different texture than the grief
for the cut-short.

I’m grateful to have been present for the long life’s ending —
For the specific spending
Of the years I had with him, the full accounts
Of the things we built together, the mounts
And the valleys, the specific education
Of the long and complicated narration
Of a father and a son across the decades.