Vickie Cleckley (1953-2024)
My journey into grief from early December
As 2024 enters into 2025, here are some thoughts and readings on grief, which I will be expanding into 2025, as I reflect.
December 3, 2024
Vickie Cleckley, forever beloved Momma to me, passed away this afternoon, surrounded by her family and loved ones. Days and nights, I stayed by her side, sleeping in the hospital room and watching over her—refusing to leave. Momma is free.
December 5, 2024
For those nearby attending Momma’s funeral tomorrow, I made a graphic with the date, times, and locations for her visitation, her funeral, and her burial. If unable to come, then please visit us sometime at Enterprise Laundromat. Before Momma passed, I chose Proverbs 31:25: “Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.” And she will. We have life to come.
To Life—
Vickie Cleckley
Friday, December 6, 2024
West End Baptist Church
2005 2nd Ave. N
Clanton, AL 35045
Visitation
10:00 AM
Funeral
11:00 AM
Burial to Follow at
Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church
444 Co. Rd. 347
Plantersville, AL 36758
Those unable to come can always visit us at Enterprise Laundromat in Clanton, AL!
December 9, 2024
You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language.
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief
December 12, 2024
C.S. Lewis writes, ‘I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.’ Early on, many grieving people are unable to do much productively, as our mind, our brain, and our body are too dysregulated to function properly without our loved one. But over time, we have an opportunity to learn how to respond to each moment as it presents itself.
- Mary-Frances O’Connor, The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss
December 14, 2024
Her kin, kneeling around, a vigil keep,
Venting their grief in low sobs unrepressed:—
Friends, she but slumbers, wherefore do ye weep?
- Christina Rossetti, “One of the Dead,” 1847
December 16, 2024
What we bitterly regretted was that the doctor’s mistake had deceived us; otherwise Maman’s happiness would have become our chief concern. The difficulties that prevented Jeanne and Poupette from having her in the summer would not have counted. I should have seen more of her: I should have invented things to please her.
- Simone de Beauvoir, A Very Easy Death
December 18, 2024
Our black cat Ninja was born in the spring of 2008, and he passed away earlier this past evening—Wednesday, December 18, 2024. He loved to lie on Momma’s chest and listen to her heartbeat. Since her passing earlier this month, I suspected he would soon join her. Animals know absence. Monday and Tuesday, we took him to the laundromat, where he spent the days in the office with me. I laid some blankets down, and we sat there together, with him resting beside me. Earlier at home, since we close the laundromat on Wednesdays, he warmed himself in the window, spending time in the light. He drank some water and walked around our home through the dining room and, finally, back to my parents’ room. When I went to check on him, he had taken his last breath—and he still felt warm.
December 20, 2024
“Dirge Without Music”
By Edna St. Vincent Millay,
The Buck in the Snow and Other Poems
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
December 23, 2024
All reality is iconoclastic. The earthly beloved, even in this life, incessantly triumphs over your mere idea of her. And you want her to; you want her with all her resistances, all her faults, all her unexpectedness. That is, in her foursquare and independent reality. And this, not any image or memory, is what we are to love still, after she is dead.
- C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
December 24, 2024
In the Midst of Winter: Selections from the Literature of Mourning, from 1982, has been helpful to me—with many great bite-sized excerpts.
I have selected from the selections here:
It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart.
- Ecclesiastes 7:2
And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in memory’s rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?
- Emily Brontë, “Remembrance”
There’s little joy in life for me,
And little terror in the grave;
I’ve lived the parting hour to see
Of one I would have died to save.
- Charlotte Brontë, “On the Death of Anne Brontë”
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
- Christina Rossetti, “Remember”
It is the image in the mind that links us to our lost treasures; but it is the loss that shapes the image, gathers the flowers, weaves the garland.
- Colette, My Mother’s House
Christmas feels jarring played in the key of grief, but I wish all some merry Christmas—as much as can be.
Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Throng’d the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.
- Christina Rossetti, “A Christmas Carol,” 1872
December 31, 2024
My hope for 2025 is to gather much wisdom through much sorrow, to find peace in remembrance.