Merci sends wisdom from Rilke

Martijn and Susan enjoy a joyous New Year's Eve (with Suzanne and Rich) 

in Excelsior, Minnesota, ten years ago, 1988.

Dear Susan,

I'm sending along a passage which I read in the last few days, and found very comforting. I like Rilke's poetry a lot, but the book someone gave me is a collection of his correspondence. For the sake of context, I've included the entire passage, though some parts may speak more to you than others (as they did for me). I also took the liberty of adding paragraph breaks...so sue me for my editorial touch! The bolded/italic words were stressed in the original.

Thinking of you, and sending you a warm hug!

Lots of love,
Merci


"My dear S…,
I very much took your letter to heart, and, on the one hand, I wish to encourage you in your pain so that you experience it in all of its fullness, since as the experience of a new intensity it is a great experience of life and in turn leads back toward life, like everything that reaches a certain extreme degree of strength. On the other hand, I am filled with fear when I imagine how you have cut off and limited your life at this point, afraid of touching anything full of memories (and what is not full or memories?). You will freeze up if you keep doing that, you must not, dear, you have to keep moving, you have to return to the things that had been his, you have to lay hand on [your lost one's] things that are also yours due to such complex relations and attractions, S… (this might be the mission assigned to you by this incomprehensible fate).

You have to continue his life within your life to the extent that it had not been completed; his life has now passed over to yours and you who truly knew him can move forward quite as intended: make this the task of your mourning, to explore what he expected of you, hoped for you, wished would happen to you.

If I could only convince you, my friend, that his influence has not left your existence (how much more securely I feel my father's influence and assistance within me since he is no longer with us). Consider how much in daily life distracts, obscures, and renders another's love imprecise. Now especially he is here, and now he has all the freedom to be here and we have all the freedom to feel him… Haven't you felt [your lost one's] influence and affinity this way thousands of times from outer space where nothing, nothing, S…, can ever be lost? Do not believe that anything that is part of our true realities could disappear or cease to exist: that which had so steadily worked its effects on us had already been a reality independent of all our present and familiar circumstances. This is precisely why we experienced it in such a different way and as responding to a completely independent need, because from the beginning it was aimed and determined at something beyond the here and now. All of our true relations, all of our penetrating experiences reach through the Whole, through life and death; we have to live in Both, be intimately at home in both. I know people who are already facing both the one and the other quite intimately and with the same love. And is life truly less mysterious and more familiar to us than that other condition? Are they not both placed namelessly above us, and equally out of reach. We are true and pure only in our willingness toward the whole, the undecided, the great, and the greatest."

--Rainer Marie Rilke. From a letter written August 1, 1913, to Sidonie Nádherny von Borutin, from the book: "The Poet's Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke," edited and translated by Ulrich Baer.

Our "Usness"

Our Parisian Honeymoon, July 1996

We spoke openly of how our love might endure once Martijn was not present in the physical realm. These conversations were difficult, most difficult and touching and wrenching. Martijn found it easier to tell me of his beliefs in the love beyond space and time by quoting from respected authors. Now, as I endure pain sometimes so dark and bleak that I'd rather depart this earth, I try, really try to allow Martijn's love to in fact be transformative, transcendent. When I let myself, I feel this radiance and let it fill me with hope. It will take all my strength to overcome the loss of the physical tenderness,  gentleness,  happiness and even rapture that Martijn's mere physical presence provided. Our "Usness" was integral to our love - it existed not only in romantic embraces, but in the sheer affection and attentiveness we lavished on the other. What, I ask, what can replace this tenderness? How does my soul accept this ethereal, spiritual evolution when as a beating, breathing heart I so crave the warmth of my beloved?

I will take faith from Martijn's beliefs. Here are the two most touching pieces he presented me. The first is taken from a precious handwritten card for my 58th birthday:

Friday, the 4th of april 2008,

To my most beloved wife,

I feel very, very sad to write this down, and I don't know what words to choose. I borrow the words from Elisabeth Barrett-Browning, Sonnet XLI, from the Portuguese:

"Oh to shoot my soul's full meaning in to future years,

  That they should lend it utterance and salute

  Love that endures with Life that disappears!"

From your husband Martijn

This final note was left for me to find, marked in a book 

by the philosopher Binswanger that he was intending to use 

for his work on a thesis about love beyond time and space.

From Ludwig Binswanger, the German philosopher, 

Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins. Zurich

But how are things when death does not meet You but Me? 

Even then, as your You, I am not dying; 

even then the Usness in love does not decay. 

I can only die as an individual, but not as the You of an I. 

When I die as an individual, then yet in dying, 

I am more than ever Yours, part of our Usness. 

As I received “my life” from your hands anew – 

from yours as the hands of the lover 

as much as only through you, 

the being in Usness “opened up” for me – 

I put it back into your hands when dying. 

I do not die the “heavy” death of an isolated “I”, 

but say goodbye to you knowing 

that even in this parting is still presence 

because the lover as someone who was here 

is still here in the sense of the existence of the Usness, 

a Here that rips open the depths and abysses of existence even more; 

that calls it even more into the eternal presence of love 

and allows it to exist within that love.

Martijn's Letter to His American Friends

Martijn, summer 2007

Maastricht, Wednesday, 30th of April 2008

To my dear American Friends,

I can tell my deepest emotions in a few words: I really have become to appreciate you and your country. I met a lot of openness, had fun with you, and understand much better how your society evolved from the very beginnings. In these difficult political and economic times for you I want to say that there is quite a difference between a government and the American people. I have got to know you as so much more spontaneous, energetic and even more friendly than my own countrymen. Of course I had and have some serious criticism on how the system works, but I know a lot of you do too. But let me tell you this: almost every American visitor to us in Maastricht got by me the invitation to visit the American cemetery in Margraten (near to Maastricht) and Henri-Chapelle in nearby Belgium, where so many American soldiers died for the cause of real freedom in this continent. Maybe it because I belong to an older generation already, but I have always been aware of the terrible price your country paid on behalf of us. By the way, Maastricht was the first Dutch city to be liberated. I always felt at ease near to the dead in their graves: it is the mix of the consciousness of history, stillness, and the beautiful landscape that gives the feeling that we sense the bigger and sometimes incomprehensible whole around us. I got this same feeling many times when I was very near to nature when living with Suzy in Minnesota: the Indian Summer, the sail boats on the ice of Lake Minnetonka, or sauna near frozen Prior Lake. Thank you for sharing in the beauty of your people and nature!