Category: grief

Everyday Ghosts

“My father will always be a touchstone ghost. He comes around often, especially late at night when I’m singing…” – Raymond King Shurtz

A touchstone ghost?
My father?
A thick shame falls over the morning…
Mother is dead now too, and her death, still fresh and ungrieved
also hovers

What am I to make of the absence?
parents who consumed so much of my energy –
emotional energy, for sure –

Suddenly, they are gone
and the silence echoes
bouncing off the chamber
where my guilt lies

Was I ever enough?
I thought about walking away
So many times…

But how could I?
One dependent
one abusive
both declaring love

I am not infantile
not rendered immobile
but my heart does falter

If either ghost is a touchstone
it is a measure of progress
a beacon of survival

I wish them both well
and infinite peace
and well, I also wish them gone

It is the relief that comes with their passing
that gives me pause….
am I really that cold-hearted?

No, not cold-hearted
just worn out
and longing to breathe

But ghosts linger
spirit infiltrating
generational layers

and I hear my father’s voice
in my grown son’s compassion –
a side he seldom could convey

and I see my mother’s resiliency
in a granddaughter’s determination

and I know now what the grief is…
the failure to recognize the gifts
amid the constant suffering

Even in war their are blessings
and I’ve forgotten to stop fighting
still hold my breath, waiting
for the fallout

Maybe the ghosts remain
as a reminder

that I survived.

(Written for Holly Troy’s writing prompt: Everyday Ghosts, which invites us to breathe in a prompt (the quotation) and write without pause for 5, 10, 15 minutes.)

The Pilgrimage

A soft-sided,
well worn,
briefcase
slouches
in a closet

One side agape,
a red lanyard
stuffed inside –
occupational identity

A row of black, brown, and gray pumps
line up beside it – a thin layer of dust
betraying idleness.

Silent, unblinking,
a television recedes
into the wall,
flanked on either side
by smiling images –
shadows of nostalgia.

Stacks of books
and journals
rumour
a scholarly mind.

The woman,
to whom all these trivialities
once had relevance
is no longer here.

She has been called to another purpose.

(Originally written in 2014, The Pilgrimage strives to help me understand the purpose behind losing all to illness. Image my own)

Dichotomy of Christmas

Between festive preparations
and Mother’s dying wishes
I walk a surreal line – numbed
surface belying broiling depths

I will serve the bird, scrape
the carcass, sing praises
and slip into solitude to grieve –
Mother’s flesh languishing.

(Last year, when I penned this poem, my mom was contemplating assisted dying. I supported her wish, but not without accompanying grief. This year, her absence weighs heavily on the preparations for Christmas, and I know I am not alone. Many of us feel our losses even deeper at this time of year.)

The Call That Never Came

I called you.
That one time.
Poured my heart out..
such despair.

I called you.
You weren’t there.
Left a message –
garbled words
rushed to beat
the inevitable beep.

Regret immediate,
then panic –
ineradicable
this outpouring
of a lonely heart,
fantasizing.

I called you.
You didn’t answer.
You never called back.

Thank you for that.

(Poem first appeared on One Woman’s Quest II. Image my own)

Lorraine

Remember how we fought
at four and five –
over whose turn it was
to push the baby buggy?

Your Campbell soup baby face
locks curlier than mine;  
eyes a brighter sparkle

How you withdrew from me with age
ashamed your mother was an alcoholic –
I did not care, carried my own secrets

How you chose drugs to cope,
while I went straight – the line
too wide to cross, it seemed.

You were my roots, dear friend
the rock I needed to ground me
Life, back then, never easy

Secrets tore us apart – projections
of judgments never actualized
somehow, I never measured up

I see you now, shrouded in the mist
of my own grief, understand that your turmoil
ran deeper than I had known, and one day

when we meet in Heaven,
I will embrace the whole you
and we will laugh at how secrets

whose very disclosure would have solidified us
kept us more and more distant – so little
did we know of love at the time.

(Lorraine died at the age of 26 – complications from drug use. After her death, I learned that she was a lesbian, a secret that she thought she could not share with me at the time. She had not known that I would not have judged her. Sadly, we never had the chance. I loved her so.)

Mourning

A murder of crows
peck at a carcass
beneath the old Spruce
Likely dragged there
by a coyote after feasting

They do that sometimes
a brazen act of rebellion
our bricked presence
blocking the path

I reached for the phone
this morning, wanting to relay
current events, and then…stopped
remembering you are gone
only my carcass remains, rots
at the mocking of crows

Coyotes are tricksters, they say
and I feel picked apart
preyed upon on my own path
the wounds of the past
inviting the mind’s vultures.

What is it all about
this mortality/ immortality?

A dove rests on the porch rail
sleeping despite the crow fray

Peace slumbers on this mournful day.

(Image my own)