When “Time’s Gone” and What’s Beyond It

James Blunt’s new song “Monsters” mentions the phrase, “the time has gone,” and there is such vulnerability in the video that it actually depicts the incomprehensible reality we face in the full grip of loss.

The song resonates because it demands the listener face a reality that none of us can deny. Well, either we admit that the love we have means loss is a crushing blow, or we insist on denying the pain to our own peril.

I think of our parents, my wife’s maternal grandmother, our son Nathanael, well, my daughters and their partners and children, our siblings... the list goes on and on. At some point we will lose them, or they will lose us.

The finality of death resounds into eternity, which is just over the cusp of anything we can ever be aware of.

The thrust of this article is the poem below, but there is a truth we can miss even as we’re unravelled by the grief in loss.

Most of us never realise the opportunity for a deeper healing all our lives have been heralding—a healing hidden within the undoing of us in grief—and we stumble across it serendipitously by accident. And, in that, hope becomes glorious, and finally having tasted healing we feel spiritually invincible. Yes, because grief undid us!

Here’s the poem:

TIME’S GONE

Photos on a wall, memories in the pages,

Speak all too often, of our inability to grasp,

That descending reality, echoing through the ages,

Loss comes to haunt, then stripped is the mask.

Seconds tick by oh so silently,

Catching all of us ever too unaware,

All of a sudden reality springs violently,

When there are no seconds to spare.

Bearing the starkness of a frightful truth,

The loved one to whom it’s goodbye,

Life amid grief is its very own sleuth,

Nothing can be done when the end is nigh.

Reminded by chance, the suddenness of shock,

Death waits for nobody, morning, night and noon,

Not a moment too late, the Lord does knock,

Taking the life we loved always too soon.

~

The poem is inspired by Blunt’s song.

The amount of times I’ve gone to a photo album to access my emotions, to pour my heart out in the mode of healing sobs of loss that honour the truth, as the mind recalls memories that sorely need reverencing.

We hardly reconcile this truth, but it prevails eternally: in grief our masks of invulnerability are stripped off, and we’re laid bare, which feels like torment, but is actually incredibly redemptive, if only we can bear the pain of exposure. It just goes to show how important safe places and spaces are. The presence of these makes healing possible.

Living in the dimension of time, the seconds ever ticking forward, and they seem slow don’t they, but they ever teem forth to such a point, proof of which loss is inevitable.

Loss is a stark and frightful truth, a reality that dawns not a moment too late.

But, what’s beyond loss? Is there any hope beyond the despair of it?

As mentioned above, none of us ever realise the opportunity that exists wholly and solely in grief. The opportunity is for the deeper healing all our lives have been heralding but as yet we’d been unaware of. This is a healing hidden WITHIN the undoing of us in the grief itself. And we stumble across it serendipitously by accident.

All of this because LOVE is so strong it cannot be denied.