AUGUST 20
Eleonora [Duse] said, “Tell me about Deirdre and Patrick,”
and made me repeat to her all their little sayings and ways,
and show her their photos, which she kissed and cried over.
She never said, “Cease to grieve,” but she grieved with me,
and, for the first time since their death, I felt I was not alone.
—ISADORA DUNCANHow we need to talk about the one we have lost. It not only
gives us something to do with the energy of grief, but also
establishes the continuity of memory and spirit of one who
was so much a part of our lives.
Particularly when young lives are lost—as in the case of
Isadora Duncan, whose two young children drowned—to
speak of them and their ways somehow extends lives too
soon cut off, affirms the reality of their having been
here—See, I will speak of them. They were important. They were
here.
To talk freely of the dead is also to begin to get used to
our different experience of them now. We still have a rela-
tionship with them. We talk as a way to try it out, and try
ourselves out. We miss them. Can we reach across the line
of death—back to where they were? Will our memory serve
us? Yes, it will. Who are they to us now? It is all so new. We
say their names and our minds reverberate with the echoes
of a new world.
I will speak of my lost love—one way to learn my new life.