Grief Is Non-negotiable ~ Nick Cave

A woman called Cynthia wrote to musician, writer and actor Nick Cave
and asked him how he deals with the death of his son, Arthur.

Arthur died in 2015, aged 15, after a fall from a cliff.

This is how Cave replied:


This is a very beautiful question
and I am grateful that you have asked it.

It seems to me,

that if we love,

we grieve.

That’s the deal.

That’s the pact.

Grief and love are forever intertwined.

Grief is the terrible reminder

of the depths of our love and,

like love,

grief is non-negotiable.

There is a vastness to grief

that overwhelms our minuscule selves.

We are tiny,

trembling clusters of atoms subsumed

within grief’s awesome presence.

It occupies the core of our being

and extends through our fingers

to the limits of the universe.

Within that whirling gyre

all manner of madnesses exist;

ghosts and spirits and dream visitations,

and everything else that we,

in our anguish,

will into existence.

These are precious gifts that are as valid

and as real as we need them to be.

They are the spirit guides

that lead us out of the darkness.

I feel the presence of my son,

all around,

but he may not be there.

I hear him talk to me,

parent me,

guide me,

though he may not be there.

He visits Susie in her sleep regularly,

speaks to her,

comforts her,

but he may not be there.

Dread grief trails

bright phantoms in its wake.

These spirits are ideas,

essentially.

They are our stunned imaginations

reawakening after the calamity.

Like ideas,

these spirits speak of possibility.

Follow your ideas,

because on the other side of the idea

is change and growth and redemption.

Create your spirits.

Call to them.

Will them alive.

Speak to them.

It is their impossible

and ghostly hands that draw us back

to the world from which we were jettisoned;

better now and unimaginably changed.

With love, Nick.


Some things in life are,
as Cave says, non-negotiable.
Source: spin.com