00:02So do you know what this celebration day thing is about?
00:06I think I do.
00:08Well, I feel like it's a day to take a moment to remember people that you have loved or
00:14still love who are no longer here.
00:17It's very easy to get swept along in the current of life and forget to remember.
00:23If there's a set date, it just encourages you to mark that and then perhaps it will
00:27become a habit.
00:29I lost several family members when I was quite young.
00:33The word upsetting doesn't cover it, but it wasn't until I lost my friend, it was very
00:37sudden and very shocking.
00:39I had never experienced this gulf, this absence, and yet her absence felt like a presence at
00:45the same time.
00:46It felt like a physical whole, but it wasn't kind of black and empty, it was kind of full
00:51of her.
00:53It was so hard to talk about it, and genuinely, poetry was so helpful in feeding me a line,
01:00and helping to kind of pull me back in.
01:02It definitely made me find my feet again.
01:06This is Remember by Christina Rossetti.
01:10Remember me when I am gone away, gone far away into the silent land, when you can no more
01:17hold me by the hand, nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
01:22Remember me when no more day by day, you tell me of our future that you planned.
01:27Only remember me, you understand it will be late to counsel then, or pray.
01:33Yet if you should forget me for a while, and afterwards remember, do not grieve.
01:40For if the darkness and corruption leave a vestige of the thoughts that once I had, better by far
01:46you should forget and smile, than that you should remember and be sad.
01:53It's perfect, I think it's a perfect poem.
01:56It begins by saying, you know, remember me, remember me, but then by the end it's saying,
02:00but it's okay if you forget me because you're living.
02:04Poetry is not finite, it's not linear, it's very kind of dynamic.
02:07The same poem can serve you at different moments in your life.
02:10Grief is not fixed, it can change what it looks like, and that's okay.
02:14I dedicate this one to my friend Caroline, who was gone far too soon, but who still makes
02:21me laugh.
02:22She was a brilliant friend.
02:25One of the most difficult things is the part of me that went.
02:29How your identity shifts in the wake of that loss.
02:32The white hot pain of losing her initially, it felt physically painful.
02:37But in time, the white hot pain has dissipated and it has been replaced by something that's
02:43softer and more joyful.
02:45When someone isn't tangibly here, they do still exist.
02:49When you celebrate them, it's like you can still hear their voice.
02:52There are things that you see that you know that they would laugh at, and in that moment
02:57you've conjured them.
02:59Your mind is very creative in helping you to continue having a relationship with them.
03:03It's sort of the magical thinking that Joan Didion talks about.
03:05I had not experienced that kind of magic quality until I'd experienced grief.
03:12It's a surprisingly creative process.
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