This is one of the quilts I was working on as I sat in the rental space in Colorado, where everytime Danny drove off, I’d wonder if I’d ever see him again. I couldn’t look at the cloth for months. Somehow, now I can. The dirty and chaotic feel of it captures some of the awfulness of those days in Longmont.
Deb thought I should rethink the green moon so I covered it with some organza. What do you think? An improvement is my feeling.
Here’s a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. I get one every day now by email.
I’ve signed up to get her daily poems. It’s a treat every morning to open up my email and read her words. This was from this morning (recall that she lost her son, Finn, to suicide some years back).
Dear Heart,
I remember those months when you were naked, when the pain was so great and you were so tender not even the flimsiest
slip of protection would stay on. This was how I learned your true state— raw, porous, vulnerable— the only place in which love grows.
How did I ever think I could protect you from pain? Why did I ever believe that that was the goal? As if breaking is not inevitable.
As if loving doesn’t always involve a flood, a drought, a drowning, a dearth, a blessing. Now, no matter how many
layers I try to wrap you in— there is no not knowing that your emptiest, loneliest, places are also worthy of love.
Now, I have learned to be grateful that even when I wrap you in an armor of busy-ness or coats of competency, you are always naked underneath.
A poem written on the six-month anniversary of Danny’s death (9/16/26). Digital collage from ages ago using a photo of a boy from Skateboarding Magazine.
Walking
I saw a hawk. Eye level. Flew like a shot across my path.
I’d just been thinking: some people cannot stay, they just cannot stay.
A few houses later, the elegant thing sailed overhead, wings outstretched, riding the thermal currents. Its under-feathers caught the morning light as if to say:
I, raptor, am sacred. You, human, are sacred. And that child who you lost? He too is sacred, still.
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
