All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation

Writing in verse, Gilbert angrily confronts God and resists giving up her pain. She and God are at a standstill until Gilbert admits that she needs to lose the battle and let go of her pain. She tells God to not give up, since she really shouldn’t win the fight. She ends with a sketch captioned, “Humility opens the door of grace very well” (226).

Rayya’s words devastated Gilbert. With Rayya’s affections now gone, Gilbert began to crash emotionally. She abandoned the luxury apartment to Rayya and slept on her friend’s couch, repeating an old pattern of seeking help after a devastating heartbreak. Now untethered, Rayya was free to fully pursue her addiction and invited other people with substance addictions over to use with her. She told friends that Gilbert had abandoned her because being her caregiver was too challenging, an assertion that made Gilbert wild with fury. Instead of acknowledging her own role in entangling Rayya’s life and well-being with her own, Gilbert instead blamed Rayya completely and began to hate her.

In this poem, God speaks to Gilbert, telling her that she has an addiction and that she needs to just listen, take care of herself, and rest.