Nick Cave's open letter to a grieving fan is a beautiful meditation on loss

When a fan wrote to legendary Australian musician Nick Cave to ask him a question about grief, little did she know she would get a reply so open and eloquent that it would stir hearts around the world.

In 2015, Cave's 15-year-old son Arthur fell from a cliff near Brighton, England, and died from his injuries. At the time, the family released a statement: "Our son Arthur died on Tuesday evening. He was our beautiful, happy loving boy. We ask that we be given the privacy our family needs to grieve at this difficult time."

The devastating effect of that loss was catalogued on Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' 2016 album Skeleton Tree, and in a documentary about its making, One More Time With Feeling.

Then late last week, Cave published a reply to a fan who herself was going through the death of several loved ones, and it's an incredibly touching meditation on loss, grief, and how those we love live on.

Cynthia wrote:  "I have experienced the death of my father, my sister, and my first love in the past few years and feel that I have some communication with them, mostly through dreams. They are helping me. Are you and Susie feeling that your son Arthur is with you and communicating in some way?"

In his answer, Cave talks about how love and grief are inseparably intertwined, and how grief's "awesome presence" can be all-consuming.

"It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe. Within that whirling gyre all manner of madnesses exist; ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence," he writes.

"These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness."

Like ideas, these spirits speak of possibility. Follow your ideas, because on the other side of the idea is change and growth and redemption. Create your spirits. Call to them. Will them alive. Speak to them.- Nick Cave

Cave goes on to describe how he feels the presence of his son talking to him, guiding him, and even parenting him — even though he may not be there — and how Arthur soothes his wife Susie in her sleep.

"Like ideas, these spirits speak of possibility. Follow your ideas, because on the other side of the idea is change and growth and redemption. Create your spirits. Call to them. Will them alive. Speak to them," he says.

"It is their impossible and ghostly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jettisoned; better now and unimaginably changed."

Read the full letter, which was originally published on The Red Hand Files website, here:

Dear Cynthia,

This is a very beautiful question and I am grateful that you have asked it. It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That's the deal. That's the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves. We are tiny, trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief's awesome presence. It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe. Within that whirling gyre all manner of madnesses exist; ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence. These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness.

I feel the presence of my son, all around, but he may not be there. I hear him talk to me, parent me, guide me, though he may not be there. He visits Susie in her sleep regularly, speaks to her, comforts her, but he may not be there. Dread grief trails bright phantoms in its wake. These spirits are ideas, essentially. They are our stunned imaginations reawakening after the calamity. Like ideas, these spirits speak of possibility. Follow your ideas, because on the other side of the idea is change and growth and redemption. Create your spirits. Call to them. Will them alive. Speak to them. It is their impossible and ghostly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jettisoned; better now and unimaginably changed.

With love, Nick.