Heavy
Heavy - meaning Summary
Learning to Carry Grief
The poem describes surviving a period of overwhelming grief and learning that sorrow need not destroy the person who bears it. A friend's advice shifts the speaker's focus from the burden itself to the practice of carrying it. Faith, friendship, and deliberate attention to the world's beauty allow laughter and wonder to return, even though loss, unanswered love, and trouble remain unresolved.
Read Complete AnalysesThat time I thought I could not go any closer to grief without dying I went closer, and I did not die. Surely God had his hand in this, as well as friends. Still, I was bent, and my laughter, as the poet said, was nowhere to be found. Then said my friend Daniel, (brave even among lions), “It’s not the weight you carry but how you carry it– books, bricks, grief– it’s all in the way you embrace it, balance it, carry it when you cannot, and would not, put it down.” So I went practicing. Have you noticed? Have you heard the laughter that comes, now and again, out of my startled mouth? How I linger to admire, admire, admire the things of this world that are kind, and maybe also troubled – roses in the wind, the sea geese on the steep waves, a love to which there is no reply?
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