There are times when the steady routine of life takes a dip, spins out on the icy road of reality, and you’re forced to pause, look around, peer over the edge of the abyss.
Like you said, everything was so normal… and then suddenly a fissure opened up.
And in these times the veneer of routine and day-to-day comfort zones strips away, and revealed underneath is the raw. Uncalloused, unprotected, feelings I can’t even access anymore when I try…
And I said to you, I’m glad I have you. You keep me from bottoming out. You contain me.
Between tears and numbness, this is what I could find to say.
I know I’ve lost my language for expressing my feelings. We don’t seem to have a ready vocabulary for that. But things don’t go unnoticed. Simple things – a turned down bed, a cup of tea…
…and things that hang suspended when fissures form at our feet…
That you hung a halo of firefly lights in the bamboo over Tiny T’s little resting spot. So that I could look outside and see her halo glowing in the night.
That you said, goodnight my queen, we’ll see you in our dreams, before tucking her into the earth. So that it’s your last words – not my weeping – that can replay in my head to console my sadness.
That you wept over her little body too, lifting some of the burden of grief from me.
That you left her vigil music softly playing against the sad silence of the house.
That you toasted to all the love one small life can hold. All the love.
You swaddle my grief in gentleness. You punctuate my sadness with poetry.
All the love a life can hold. We give and we take and that’s all there is.
i am just now seeing this. and you surely have not lost your words. your poetry is as real as ever. i am honored to have been there that night, to bear witness to the love that holds you together.