Nick Cave on Combining the Darkness of Loss and the Bright Continuation of Life – The Marginalian

Few things in our culture are more damaging than the concept of healing – as if the pain and loss we experience is an illness, a mental dysfunction to be cut out like a tumor, rather than a natural function of life, of feeling alive and living it fully. All our sorrows have been wasted if we have not learned to suffer and are surprised by the door at the end of our suffering, on the other side of which the world is wide, which continues in the world. It is not healing that allows us to move on but integration, allowing our loss to live just next to our joy so that it has meaning, shaking us from the grip of indifference worse than death.

No one articulated this more clearly and profoundly than Nick Cave when he reflected on the anniversary of his young son's death:

It is morning in Nîmes. I'm waiting for coffee while looking out the window of the small hotel where Susie and I are staying. The bottom square is waking up. There are a few cars, a woman walking a dog, a kid on a scooter, an old man smoking on a bench. Today, Susie and I plan to walk around town a bit, maybe visit a church, and maybe find a river that people say is clean and cold. Later, I will play a play in the amphitheater.

I'm not saying this just to console the bereaved, as if to say that in time everything will be alright, because even if it is, it won't be alright. Instead, I agree that even though this day marks the 11th anniversary of the worst day in our lives, it is also a good day, the sun is shining, a child is playing, a man is enjoying a cigarette, a quiet country looking forward.

This may be the most damning aspect of loss – the way the world goes on indiscriminately when your world is destroyed. But the great irony is that it is through this commitment to moving forward, both reluctantly and overflowing with wonder, that we are brought back to life.

Nick paints a beautiful still life of this bright continuum:

He is waking up now, and I am sitting next to him. He says he dreamed about Arthur. Arthur often comes to him that way. Simple, poetic dreams. He tells me that he dreamed that he was in a dark place, maybe a wood, calling him. But it was too dark, and he couldn't find her.

These feelings of loss move through our bodies like ghosts. They live in our cells, in our blood, gathering together on days like these like the weather, shaping us in ways we don't understand. It's a sad day. I can see it in my wife's eyes. But a normal day is also, a good day. It's a beautiful day. Suzi is already at the window, pulling back the curtain, looking out over the city, the sun shining on her face.

A couple with Hemingway's letter of condolence to a couple who lost their son, then visit Nick Cave about how to use your suffering, the two pillars of a meaningful life, and the cure for our existential helplessness.