The Poetry of Loss

I thought I would share with you all some of the words that have sprung from my experience so far.

These span the last 6 months.  The first poem I write the night before Susan passed away.  It came to me in the middle of the night while sitting up with her in the dark living room.

NIGHT WATCH 11-26-2014

It is four AM

I sit in this darkened room

Silent and mournful

Looking at the still artifact that is my sweetheart

Who for 2 decades

Has held my hand on this journey…

The only sound is the hum of the air filter

Then she stirs, a soft moan, then a bolus of pain meds

This valiant woman, who deftly healed troubled souls

Who brought 3 incredible persons into the world

Equipped them with humor, intelligence

And taught them to love….

Oh this cancer, this scourge, this malevolence

There is no mercy in this wretched process

For her, for me, for those who love her

There is only the ticking clock,

The next medicine alarm

And the sorrow and pain

That is bound to follow.

After Susan's Shiva came the holidays, and I was lucky enough not to have to be home alone during that time. But the return home was somewhat of a shock.

RETURN FROM THE ROAD 01-04-2015

Honey I am home!

Oh crap...
greeted by a dark
and cold
and lifeless abode

The new reality
delayed by visits to loved ones
but now
only tick, tick, tick
The home's heart gone
and my heart broken...

And then came the dark times. Winter compounded by loss, loneliness and sometimes despair.

TIRED OF HEARING IT! 01-14-2015

 The songs all talk of heartbreak

About love lost when he or she departs
But they that leave are still around
And one can dwell on what hope imparts

I lost my love to cancer
Watched her wheeled away
Say my good-byes to a silent photo
A box of ashes has nothing to say.

I lost my love to cancer
She cannot be replaced
Her smile her laugh her honest grit
Will nary be erased

A DAY OF DARKNESS 02-07-2015

Oh shuffle me off this mortal coil
Deliver me from all this pointless toil
Please let me join my princess fair
Whose absence I can scarcely bear

Oh shuffle me off this mortal coil
I’ve no desire to be pacing this cage
There’s nothin’ left I need to attend
Just waiting for my time to be at an end…

THE EMPTY ABODE II 02-24-2015

The ticking of the clocks mark
The passage of time
In this museum of loss
This domicile that death has visited

Outside, the grey spume of winter
Lays upon the land as a dirty coat
Its forbidding sneer exhorting all
To keep away, keep away.

I am jabbed from time to time
By the sharpened needle of loss
Reminding me again and again 
What is no longer mine.

This home was once a place of joy
A place where healing came
Where laughter stalked every room
And warmth and love abounded

Save for sleeping, the pain
Of loss is in me, hour upon hour
And I must hide or be crushed
by the weight of what I know

And then finally, as I worked with a grief group full of amazing people, a hint of sunlight began to appear on the horizon...

A RAY OF SUNLIGHT? 04-07-2015

You said, my love
Before you passed
Tell me you’ll be OK
Promise me you’ll be all right

I miss you more today
Than it’s possible to say
You inhabit me and I do grasp
What I lost on that rueful day

But oddly enough I still can laugh
On Saturdays with our radio shows
Albeit wishing you here to share
Each pun, joke and breathless prose

Wounded, limping but standing yet
I move slowly to be sure
And because I had you for my wife
I can pick up the pieces of my broken life