Local author’s book, ‘Of Love and Loss’ traverses grief and reconciliation process through poetry
Tim Florian will host a reading and book signing at The Next Chapter on September 12 (tonight) from 6 to 7 p.m.
A river of sorrow runs through Tim Florian’s new book “Of Love and Loss,” but within the currents of darkness and despair are eddies of love, redemption and forgiveness.
The book includes 71 poems flowing from the headwaters of his grief after the Blackwater River killed his brothers, David and Greg.
Your waters did not kill me,
But they did not leave me alive.Breathe
It was his idea to go to the river that day. David and Tim were living in Pensacola, where they grew up. Greg, who was home from college for the summer, was staying with Tim at the time.
In Pat and Aida Florian’s big family, the first four children were the big kids, and the last six were the little kids. There is no big difference in age between the youngest big kid and oldest little kid, but for some reason, this delineated the siblings perpetually.
David, Tim and Greg were the three youngest siblings and were very close.
“It just so happened to be a day that all three of us had free,” Tim said. “And the three of us had been talking about not really seeing each other very much.”
But I like this chair.
This is my favorite chair.
When I am here, everything is fine.You and the Water
Tim had dabbled in poetry before he began writing out his grief as prose. “Looking back at that early poetry, I realize that really is the definition of dabbling,” he said. “It’s not anything I would ever make public.”
His family’s musical background and Tim’s talent—he plays guitar and sings; you can see him at Precious Blood leading music at Mass—helped the process. He appreciates music with meaningful lyrics,
“Something you can really dwell on and spend some time in the midst of,” he explained.
A story repeated over and over
Different words, same meanings
Different lines, same grievingAnother Page
Two friends joined the three brothers on that Tuesday in June as they sought a nice spot on the river to hang out, talk and float in the water.
On the drive over, the pair discussed Greg’s recent car purchase. “He was talking about car insurance,” Tim remembered.
While purchasing a policy, the insurance agent asked Greg if he wanted life insurance.
“Should I be concerned about life insurance?” Greg asked his brother.
His response is seared into his memory.
“I said, ‘Greg, they’re trying to sell you life insurance because they know you’re not going to die anytime soon,'” Tim said.
How can I be speechless
when words abrade my mind?
Constant and unforgiving
Reverberating off the walls
Of this carnival of madnessMontages and Collages
Grief wields many faces, and Tim’s book bears witness to each as he traverses that June day. Over the seven chapters, he works through the various emotions associated with losing his brothers.
“Initially, I was going to put the poems in the order I wrote them,” Tim explained. “I realized I just didn’t really want to do that.”
He then considered separating them into the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
“That didn’t last long either,” he said.
He didn’t like that route for two reasons: first, he didn’t want this to become a self-help book, and second, Tim doesn’t like the five stages of grief.
“I’ve seen people treat the five stages of grief as a mode of trying to understand other peoples’ grief through the lens of a checklist,” he explained.
Oh, you’re angry now; you’re working through it.
“But really grief is so much more cyclical than that,” he said. “Sure, you’re angry this time, and you can work through that and then, maybe that anger comes up again later for a different reason or from a different angle.”
Life inadvertently reminds you of your losses and the sadness, anger, acceptance, denial, and bargaining return.
“So I decided I want to create a mix that would convey an accurate journey of grief,” he said.
That is why the chapters in “Of Love and Loss” are simply numbered. He didn’t want to ascribe a certain emotion to any chapter.
“I figured I’ll just let the reader read the poem and get what they get out of it,” Tim explained.
Instead, I sit here and listen
But the river has no voice,
Except the two in my mind
Perpetually crying out in fear
For rescue, for help.Blackwater River
He remembers being out of the water with one of their friends. They had been swimming, tossing a football around in the water, and talking all day. It was about 4:30 or so–things are hazy looking back ten years–and Tim and the friend were done swimming.
“We were talking, and David and Greg were still in the water,” he said.
They were also talking and letting the water carry them further downstream.
“This is the difficult part,” Tim said. “They started getting a little panicky. There was some panic in their voices.”
Maybe his memory added that edge to their voices. He’s unsure.
“How I remember it, at least, was them joking around a moment before, and then it suddenly turned into something else,” Tim said.
They started crying for help, and as Tim and his friend rushed to help, the water muffled their cries, and then they were gone.
If only I was tall enough
To reach these thoughts of You
Drifting high above . . .The Deep
While dealing with the loss, Tim wrote poetry and wrestled with God.
“God was the focus of a lot of my anger,” he said. “There’s a poem that has a line that goes, ‘fists flying in the face of abandonment.’ Referring to me just wanting to punch God out, you know, because I felt abandoned by Him, and these fists were filled with these stones that I wanted to hurl at Him.”
Tim entered the seminary at Saint Meinrad and spent two years going through the formation process to discern if he should be a priest. During his time there, the malaise of his faith weighed him down as he considered priesthood.
“That’s what I was there to do; at least that is what I thought I was there to do,” he explained. “But there was a part of me that was so desperate not to be in that depression, that mire of emotion.”
He was still struggling with God.
The honest conversations that occurred through his poetry and the support he received in seminary helped him reconcile his anger with God.
He became open to healing.
“It took a sense of being open to God and letting Him in, being open to His healing, to actually receive it,” Tim said. “A turning point for me was realizing that this wasn’t something God did to me. God was just as grieved, if not more because He is perfect, at the death of my brothers.”
In his forward, Tim writes of grief as a pack of wolves that always seeks you out and finds you, no matter how well you attempt to avoid them.
“The other option is facing grief,” he writes.
Facing grief through honesty and vulnerability with yourself and your friends, family and mentors can help you to reorient your view of grief. It doesn’t go away, but you change, and your view of that grief changes over time.
“My hope with this book is that somebody might read it and recognize themselves in it,” Tim said. “I also hope that in putting this out there that it can communicate in some way or another that there really is hope and redemption in grief.”
“Of Love and Loss” is available on Amazon, at Saint Meinrad Books & Gifts and The Next Chapter in Jasper. Tim will host a reading and book signing at The Next Chapter on September 12 (tonight) from 6 to 7 p.m.
