Legacy Unfolding

You ask if today is a bad day...
Worse than any others?
Every day is full of whatever
I choose to fill it with,
Like all the others days that
Have passed this year.
Time has no affect on this unbearable pain.
Every day is a lifetime I have lived without her.
You ask if I want others around me today.
How could it matter?
Alone or within a group I am still grieving Inside myself.
Alone or in a crowd of a million there is nothing That can
Fill this void.
You ask if I want to be left alone today?
Left alone how?
Left alone with the ghost of a dead woman in my Mind.
A woman whom I speak with continually.
It wont matter if you are here or not,
The conversations will not end.
You ask if you should pray for me today.
Of course,
I request that you pray for me today.
And every day.
Pray backwards for me.
Pray forwards for me.
Pray for my family.
Pray for my mother who has buried another child,
One she was sure would survive.
Pray for my sister who has lost a piece of hope.
Pray for my brother who has suffered
The loss of a comrade.
Pray for my husband who lost the first
Unconditional sibling love he has ever known..
Please pray for my boys.
Nathan, trying so hard to remember the aunt who was his heart.
Gabe, trying to find his place in this grief.
Samuel who will be told all his life
What his name means...
A burden and a gift that he must carry.
Pray for me today and tomorrow.
Every day that I wake up I must know she is dead.
Every day that I wake up I must
Go to her funeral again.
Every day that I wake up I must carry on,
Put my everyday clothes on...
Keep my boys fed.
Listen to her laughter echo through my head.
You ask me if today has been
A year since she died?
Every moment since I knew has been a year...
10 years,
100 years,
An infinite lifetime.
Every second of everyday I light
A tiny candle in my heart
To remember her.
How else can I go on?
That light is what burns inside my soul...
Someday it will burn bright enough
To show me the Way.
But I know that will not be Today
***********************************************
Sometimes I forget.
That you are dead.
I hear your laughter...
Inside my head.
I spin around
Expecting you there...
Only to find
You are nowhere.

And when this house
Is filled with family...
It is persistently,
Consistently empty.

I can see with these two eyes
As the few memories
My sons hold
Slowly fade away and die.

In one year
I have wept for
Your conversation, embrace.
I have wept for you
To see my son's face.

You were so much alive
That it goes unsaid...
Sometimes I forget
That you are dead.
****
In that Place
Where our mind takes us
In the silky mists
On the path to sleep
There is a shadowy turn in the bend
Where the weeds are tall
And tangled.

If we wake still in this place
We pull it back with us,
Fog rolling into our
Bedrooms.
And nothing familiar there
Will remain.

The ceiling will be a lake of slated marble.
The walls...
A horizon of fire.
The clock on the table...
Tiny red sticks upon
A sacrificial pyre...
Glowing red from spirit heat.

Here is the place we go to dream.
Here is the place where
Reality is suspended indefinitely
And the world we create for ourselves
Endures for as long as it can,
Breathes until
We stop giving it breath.
Here is where we are afraid to be asked...
Or to ask others
"Who do you love?"
The answer may bleed.

I was There last night.
Holding this baby in my arms.
This baby that you have never laid eyes on,
Outside of my skin.
I was there as I held him,
Rocked him back to sleep
From a troubled rest.
And I felt you there.
Closer than skin.
As if you'd just left.
In a way you had...

And as I searched his face,
I knew.
That there, in that Place.

You are dead now too.

Finally.
Finally.

I cannot breathe you alive there
Anymore.


Reality.
If there is Reality.
Has Become.

And even in the place where I go to dream,
In the place where all hearts are bared,
The place where we grow our souls
Night after endless night.

You will no longer meet me there.

You swirl around me,
Becoming a memory there as well.

It is done.

You are gone.
***
Chorus
You've been gone for a little while
And I'm missing you.
And I know that it's been some time,
And this life seems untrue...
But I know in a little while
I will be with you.
You've been gone for a little while...
But I'll pull through.

Verse1:
As the days roll by like a movie
Of somebody else's life.
I spend my days as a daughter,
A mother and a wife.
But my sister, and my best friend...
You've left me with half smiles,
As I tell myself one more time
That its only for a little while.

(Chorus)

Verse2:
These days are getting shorter,
These boys are growing strong.
I don't think they realize
That you been gone so long.
And I know in a little while,
They'll be grown and gone...
And in only a little while
We will all be Home.

(Refrain)

And one day on that High Hill,
I'll see that Valley below.
And you'll come running to hold me
And looking back I will know...

You were gone for a little while...
And I was missing you.
But in God's eyes it was a blink of time
And He pulled me through.
Yes, in God's eyes it was a blink of time.
And He pulled me through
***
i lost destiny's whim
the absence of my open book

a waiting heart can fade by pages
i loved sorrows rages better

my chance starts today
for my unfinished life

everything cruel carried away
out of love

my tender wounds gone
where words balm

seem to leave healing
my chapters are of life

all that can read me
****

I called out your name in my sleep last night.
It was impulse and instinct,
My voice was so light.
And today there was something
I had to tell you
The urge overrode what I already knew.

If you had been asleep
I would have woken you.
If you had been lost
I would have searched for you.
But since you were dead
I tried to forget.
Just forget.
And I put it into a room
Inside my head.
The room that has the sign
"SHE IS DEAD".

These things have no where to go.
My other friends smile and nod
But they don't know.
They don't understand the things you would.
And they don't comprehend
All the things that you could.
And I can't explain it no matter
How many times it is said.
And I say it again and again.

That room fills up day by day.
And I write these words to brush
Hollow cobwebs away
From windows that can't see out
To watch my children play.

They are so much like you
When you were a child.
Remembering you little
Makes my heart wild and I
Tell myself that somewhere you can see.
Somewhere you know them and then I think
That our personalities are
Simply brain waves and
Yours have lost their electricity.

But I read somewhere
That the human body weighs less
After death
And there is no explanation besides
The exit of a soul.
But I don't know.
I don't know.
It's a placebo.
A pill I try to swallow
Made of faith, hope and love.

And the greatest of these is love
For the Eternal Power above our lives.
But I can't say
That my faith is untested day after day.
And when one gets down to dying
All this life full of trying
May end up nothing hands down,
Once you're in the cold ground.

Faith may be stupidity,
Hope an off-Broadway show
That will never make it because
Its all supposition.
We can't know
Until we are in that position.
And we will be.
All of us
And I turn to my husband and say,
You know I will wake up
To find you dead beside me
Someday.

Statistically speaking that is,
Because women live longer.
And I lay my head
Against his back and feel stronger
Although I know one day it will be cold.
I breathe in each breath growing old
And I strain
To love my children
When I know they will die.

Heidelberg man did not bury his dead.
There was no better life after
In his Heidelberg head.
Is that better?
Is that better I ask myself
As I look at my sons.
Knowing they will be the ones
To turn dust over dust when my life ends,
As it must.

I tell myself that one day,
One glorious day...
Faith, Hope and Love will give me my pay
And I will see you standing
On that distant shore
An explosion of chemical reactions in my
Oxygen deprived head and no more.

But I won't care
I won't care.
I won't care if its nothing more than
A symptom of death
If I can feel your embrace.
If I can take my fingertip
And gently trace
The hair on your brow.
I won't wonder how.

And if it only exists
For that very last breath...
That's my life after death.

***

Old friends meet at weddings
And haggle over memories.
Tell each other how beautiful we are
After we have borne our strong sons.
Our hips spread out to cradle life,
Now cradle our husbands weary heads,
Calloused hands, trembling touch.

Our faces are not yet lined and we are
Thankful for that yet we know that
The crows feet are on our souls.
The suppleness of youth has not
Abandoned our laughter and still
A mature timber has slowed our trill.

We watch the festivities with cautious eyes.
Seeing all the facets of life contained here.
No longer innocent
We cringe at the innocence around us.

We gathered like this then,
Two years ago and some say,
"I haven't seen you since..."
And then their words fade away,
Their eyes flicking past me,
Razor sharp words nicking quickly
Then pulling back.

Little sister of the bride
Grown up now herself
Rushes to greet us and begins
Her story.
She volleys with another sharing
The Little Sister saga,
"So what's your sister doing now?"
And they speak rapidly exclaming with
Every new intimacy and suddenly.

Suddenly.
I see things as they have not been shown to me.
Suddenly and completely that
Horrific nanosecond of silence engulfs me
As their eyes flick toward me and I see.

I see.
Two years of your life in a vacuum,
A futile black absence.
And I know as I have never know before that
I cannot brag, boast, proclaim, preach, criticize,
Roll big sister eyes,
Or carry the proud prize of you as you Become.
This role I have played as Big Sister
Is done.

And I look away.
Something inside of me dying.
They quickly say something else
To cover my pain.
I wonder why I am standing there with
So obviously nothing to say.

Old friends meet at weddings
And funerals.
And haggle over memories,
Sharing life and death and
All the breath in between.

You never know more
Who your true friends are
Until you are standing at that casket
And those who walk past it
Are there for you as you mourn
Your heart blackened and torn
As your little sister lay broken.
No words need be spoken.
A hand on your shoulder
Keeps your soul bolder and
You know what you posess on this earth.
I will always know my true worth
Remembering that day.

Old friends meet at weddings
And haggle over memories,
Trying not to forget the things
That brought us together.
And each word is a memory,
Each glance is a heart string,
Each touch is a furthering
Our laughter is a gathering
Echoing toward the next time we meet.