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Category Archives: Grief
Patio poem
My first fall without you since you were born thirty years ago.
The crickets sing
and the breeze makes the down-hanging maple branches sway.
The light is fading. Fall comes. Fall comes and you will not be in it.
I sweep the patio, remembering the sound of your voice. A bird zooms
past within inches of my head, an energetic thrumming.
Was that you?
“Okay” followup
It’s September. I can hardly believe it.
It’s gloomy here today. A tree crew will arrive shortly to tend our maples, black walnuts, and catalpa trees (or not? It looks like rain).
On our dog walk yesterday, just as I was hearing the words in my head, “it’s not likely a residential program would’ve saved him, even in the short term,” I found this feather.
The feather wasn’t lying flat. It was sticking straight up as if placed there, stuck in dried mud next to the curb.
Confirmation? Communication, as in permission to release blame, coming from the other side? Maybe.
I’m planning to give my grief talk a rest here, but I wanted to share this first.
The “I’m okay” mantra
I’m dyeing cloth with indigo
and I’m okay
even when the rubber bands drive me nuts, snapping and twisting the wrong way.
I’m okay
when I forget to change into my crap sneakers before dyeing and drip dye on my feet, turning some of my toes blue.
Seriously, who cares?
When my chest hurts remembering the suit that Danny dropped off to be tailored and then never picked up
because he died, I’m okay.
When I recall how strenuously we hoped that dropping off a suit to be tailored meant he wanted to live, grief grabs my throat and gives it a squeeze, but I think
I’m okay.
I’m still breathing aren’t I? Even if it hurts to breathe, I’m still breathing.
(It’s still there, I think, Danny’s suit, at that store in Boulder).
When I’m torn up trying to compose a eulogy — wondering how you sum up a person? — wondering how to introduce the adult son to folks who only knew him as a child or teen — as hard as it is, I’m okay.
What I share to others will be okay and when the time comes if I can’t get through it, that’ll be okay too.
I don’t want to cook. For days now. Even though food usually offers grounding movements, decisions, anticipations, all driven by a healthy hunger
I’m okay.
When I couldn’t focus on pricing for lenses at the eye doctor on Friday I left, knowing it was okay,
knowing I didn’t have to tell him why.
When I cry reading a text from one of Danny’s friends out loud, I’m okay. They love him too.
They love him too.
When I go to bed, exhausted but unwilling to surrender to the night, I’ll manage. I’ll read a little longer.
I’m okay.
Layers, writing, grief
After Danny died, two friends gave me the book: The Unfolding by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. She is an accomplished poet who lives in Colorado who lost her son, Finn, to suicide in 2021. She credits her daily poetry-writing practice with helping her survive the loss. It’s no surprise that her words speak to me. As does the idea of writing through grief.
Here’s something I wrote yesterday after listening to a podcast interview.*
I used to think
I used to think
peeling away layers improved the self — releasing defenses, say, allowing greater authenticity. Now
the removal of any layer of any kind leads to more grief — grief that was pooling, swelling, hiding, and waiting, apparently, for me to trip and fall into it.
I don’t know whether to wish for armor — shiny, hard, and impenetrable — or for a sudden and violent removal of all layers, as if ripping off a bandaid. Under the bandaid I would find a tiny wound and the exposure to air would help it form a scab. Heal.
Hush. Don’t say anything. I already know. Shiny garb left the wardrobe the day he died. And now tiny wounds are beneath notice given the chasm caused by grief.
I can only twist and turn in sorrow’s ambush, holding my hands over my heart, (mostly) hoping to survive.
* The Calming Ground Podcast, Writing through Grief: Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer on Poetry, Loss, and the Wonderment of Being Alive