TL;DR
Loss is inevitable, but how we choose to respond to it is up to us. Youssoupha Mabiki’s song “Mon Roi” and C.P. Cavafy’s poem “The God Abandons Antony” offer insight into facing endings with courage and grace. While relationships and things may end, we can choose to embrace gratitude for what was and find strength in letting go.
With people, as with things and places, what we love does not suddenly become poison to the soul because it dissert us.
Whenever we are confronted with loss, the road forks before us. We can either choose regret for discontinuity or gratitude for the good thing that was.
The French-Congolese rapper, Youssoupha Mabiki, put it very nicely in his song, Mon Roi.
“Même les plus belles choses peuvent finir par te prendre la tête
Il faut savoir passer à autre chose, c’est normal
Retiens que toutes les choses se finissent ou se finissent mal”
Things and relationships either end, or end badly. The choice is ours to make.
C.P. Cavafy provides a powerful response to imminent loss in his magisterial poem, The God Abandons Antony. The phrase, “The God Abandons Antony” is a direct reference to Plutarch’s telling of Octavian’s siege of Alexandria, and Antony’s realisation that his protector, Dionysus (Bacchus), was deserting him, and that the loss of Alexandria was imminent.
This is a great poem that teaches how one must face a great loss of love, glory, comfort, and even life. I hope it is one you remember, and that the mere recollection of its title shines a light in seasons of darkness.
Since Cavafy wrote in Greek, the poem below is only a translation by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, as published in C. P. CAVAFY: Collected Poems, by the Princeton University Press.
When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.