I guess, the bottom line is, it still gets to me, and somehow words that weren’t meant to, turn into poetry…

How time marches on, and this – these are the days of living, this is my life playing out in real time, but it feels like some part of me is missing and I’ll never get it back.
How to explain that catch in my throat, that persistent ache lying in the deepest reaches of my soul, when all on the outside seems well, at least if you don’t look too closely into my eyes, then – just maybe, you’d catch a glimpse but be unable to name what you see. Indwelling my personhood, my spirit, in this flesh, and even I cannot name it when words are the gift I was given… all this time, all these years, and I still have not come up with how to explain that I’ve lost something valuable yet there is no map for retrieval.

I cannot go, I cannot fly, I cannot run, I cannot seek for the remainder of my winding down clock to ever get where it remains. And what is it – wouldn’t you know by now – the treasure sought was love, and love is what was lost. Buried by the hands of fate, shoveled dirt into shallow unmarked grave, and left me to wander the rest of my days, searching but never found.

Oh, then I see, the shiny eyes of little children calling me that name, “Thank you, Mama!” They giggle and play as we unwrap presents on Christmas day, unknown to them the way it feels to never be able to look up and say, “thank you, Mama”, for the years have passed and taken love away. I did not mean to rhyme any of this, but I guess poetry is the most honest way…
I’d walk a million miles and I’d cross the sea to find that piece that’s missing from me, but smart I am so I’ve learned not to try for you cannot retrieve when the flesh has died, but go on with resolve and try your best, in spite of the pain that burns in your chest.

Something is gone, and I know it will never come back to me, a time when I really believed. Seventeen years is a long time to wait for something that will never come, yet in my heart I’m certain I have to accept it now, or I’ll fall completely undone. I don’t let it show not least to my kids, but do the work of the elves and give them another great Christmas, though deep within the woman they call Mama is a wounded little girl, and she waits for the years of this life to unfurl, so that one day long from now I’ll shut my eyes, then I’ll go and I’ll run and I’ll shout “Mama” too, but this time she’ll answer, only then our love will be healed with a heavenly view. She won’t get to hurt me like she did in this life, she won’t get to leave before I got to say goodbye. She will smile and hold me and I’ll finally say, the piece that was gone has been made whole today. She won’t have the struggles she had in this life, and I won’t be broken by the pain and the strife, but together we’ll walk and I’ll share what she missed, after death took my Mama and sealed my fate with a kiss.

When Christmas comes I miss her the most, a shadow that follows me, a persistent ghost. I love my darling children and I try my very best, to give them my love and leave out the rest, but sometimes it shows that their Mama is sad, to be holding this burden, both the good and the bad. I’ve forgiven each day since she took her last breathe, but it’s felt like I’ve been given her pain after death. I hope she didn’t plan or see it coming that she’d leave me with this pain, but I know God saw fit to equip me just the same, to be strong enough to carry this on my own, to know that forever I was destined to abandon my home. I couldn’t understand for I was too young to know, that this grief would follow me wherever I go.

So now another Christmas is here and I try and lift my eyes with hope, that I will give them all I have but in secret I’ll just try to cope. They remark when we lose love it was meant to be that way, but I believe they haven’t lost a mother for how could they say? That this was for the best and I’d move on one day, but it’s been so long and I’ve no cards to play, but fold my hand and stand up from the table, and go live this life with this pain while I am still able. Do what she couldn’t, and give what I can, for my children and that little girl Chrissy whose life had a plan. I never imagined I’d lose love so young but I guess now it’s like a word forgotten on the tip of my tongue. Always there, always waiting, but I can’t seem to get it out, but maybe that’s what grief in this life is about.