What do you remember of someone who died 20 years ago? Not enough. That is loss. I do remember her kindness, her empathy and help to others, our bodies close together, our youth, our follies, more mine than any of hers.

Today is this blog’s 5^th year launch anniversary. It’s also the 20^th anniversary of my wife’s death.

Does grief lessen with time? I think it does for most people. It’s not a place most want to make home; and as a vacation spot it’s going to get some no-star reviews. Does loss lessen with time? Not objectively. After all, survivors have over time accumulated additional lost experiences that they have been deprived of. But even that is complicated in honesty. Other things, or one hopes that other things, come in to fill the low and missing places. Those low and missing places are still there, like Pompeii under ash. And like there, there are entwined bodies now made hollow places, suitable for casting.

One of the castings that were made from cavities left in Pompeii ash

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Do not feel sorry for me. Since then, I met someone, we married, we had a child. I get to encounter words, mostly poetry here, compose music, and make some combinations of those real, as best I can, so that you can hear them. Despite infirmities, despite those low places, my store of gratitude is large.

And my loss is far from unique. Unless you are one of my younger readers, you no doubt have lost several you had some level of closeness to. How many, and how close, varies I suppose. In the immediate depth of grief, we probably feel our loss personally, as we still feel every unique part of it. That’s a forgivable illusion, though all grief connects absolutely.

A few weeks ago I wrote the poem that is the text for today’s audio piece. The core image came to me rather forcefully asking to be cast, and the poem followed close at its heels. Last month I got to perform it with Dave. I don’t find this performance as good as I would like it to be, but then that may be my personal opinion and expectations that it be good enough for the occasion. The day to share it with you is today, and it’s the best version of it I have at this time.

The text of the poem used for today’s piece.

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“I Am Laughing in the Dark Underground”  proceeds by revealing and describing the core image that came over me and caused the poem to be created. Why was I laughing? I knew first only that I was. In dreams or images, one sometimes acts in ways that you would not write consciously, incongruous ways. After creating a first draft of the poem, I began to think that I was laughing out of the incongruity itself. The feeling I was having was neither frightening nor pleasing, but it was mysterious, and I somehow knew the laughter was important.

The mystery of it was largely made up of where was I, and the answer was clearly nowhere I could tell. Nowhere is anywhere. Anywhere is all of us.

My original sentiment in the experience of the image was that the “you” in the poem was maybe my living wife, and then my dead wife, but while the image was still present, I began to see I wasn’t supposed to know for sure, and that it was also others. If grief is universal, if it connects absolutely, then in this place it’s your you too — you grieving, your lost one or ones. I sensed those presences without there being any normal sensory device other than the smallest disturbances in background noise.

I chose to end the poem on the laughter, the necessary laughter, the missing laughter, the laughter that was there in me as I sensed this place. What does that laughter mean? It means what laughter means to you or me, all the time, not some special meaning when in the transport of this image, but ordinary laughter and its multitudinous events and occurrence.

The player gadget to hear “I Am Laughing in the Dark Underground”  will appear for some of you below. No sight of it? Then this highlighted hyperlink is another way — it’ll open up a new tab window to play it.

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