Begin afresh

One morning recently I woke up thinking of Philip Larkin's poem 'The Trees':

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

I was struck by the line "Their greenness is a kind of grief". Right now when the garden is blooming (sometimes only with weeds), it seems almost unfair that there should be such growth and life when Jen is dead and gone, another sign that the world is moving on without her.

The poem also touches strangely on two apparently conflicting desires I experience. The first is the desire to change, to begin afresh, to set new patterns for life. Of course this has to happen eventually, but every now and then there's a wild impulse to make radical alterations. At times, were it not for the boys, I think I'd feel like selling everything and leaving for a new city or country. The second impulse is to keep everything the same, to enshrine as nearly as possible the way our life has run, and seek to continue that indefinitely.

At the moment I'm veering more towards the second desire. For the sake of the boys I want to minimize the further disruption in our lives, on top of the colossal disruption we've already experienced. So for example I'd like to do an Advent calendar this year (as would Secundus), because Jen had done that for several years in a row. At the same time I am making small changes (just to find a workable routine), and this will only increase with time.

A friend helpfully pointed out that grief can coexist alongside happiness - that I don't have to wait some predefined period before I can change anything. I don't want grief to go away, and I don't think it will, but merely change its form.

Another favourite Larkin poem is 'No Road' - it's noticeable how poems or songs about separation also say something to me about bereavement.

Since we agreed to let the road between us
Fall to disuse,
And bricked our gates up, planted trees to screen us,
And turned all time's eroding agents loose,
Silence, and space, and strangers - our neglect
Has not had much effect.

Leaves drift unswept, perhaps; grass creeps unmown;
No other change.
So clear it stands, so little overgrown,
Walking that way tonight would not seem strange,
And still would be followed. A little longer,
And time would be the stronger,

Drafting a world where no such road will run
From you to me;
To watch that world come up like a cold sun,
Rewarding others, is my liberty.
Not to prevent it is my will's fulfillment.
Willing it, my ailment.

There is of course no road between Jen and I now in this life, but I was moved by the image of the way between two people becoming overgrown yet still present. So I do want and need change, "To watch that world come up like a cold sun", yet hesitate to "turn time's eroding agents loose".