Happiest Days, Heaviest Sorrow

(8/31-9/2-3)

We listen too hard and speak too late
We wonder too long and squander what's on the plate.
Some of us laugh in the darkest hours
Even as dreams roll down their face
when you close your eyes, does the world disappear?

As I sit here waiting,
your face is all that I can see
as you are lowered into the cold ground
my body is overtaken by shivers.
I can feel you looking at me
smiles and laughter we shared just yesterday.
I can't believe, all I can do is watch
as you're swiftly taken away from me.

I still can't let you go
I still can't understand
why I'm still left here wondering
how I can live without you loving me.
I still can't comprehend why
I'm asking myself these questions
when the words just don't make sense.
'Round and round, thoughts keep spinning in my head
I feel like I'm reciting a storybook
but the words won't fit in my mouth
and the pictures are making me sick.
I try to spit them out but when I can't look at you
I am finding out that I just can't breathe.

I'm sitting alone inside of myself,
in the place you used to visit.
Like a child in a new city who's never left home;
there's no seat or perch, no park or place
that can make her feel like she's ever really safe.
Alone in this empty place that only I know.
Alone inside of myself, moving in the hidden ways
I've lost my will to see the living, breathing, aching
heart that is working it's will inside of me.

I can wake up every morning
with a smile on my face
but I can't look inside of myself
and pull out what is gone.
No matter what anyone says
I can't heal what I've lost.
I can only keep living.
I have two choices, to die
or to suffer in good faith
and keep living.
Death is when the end of me arrives,
so that leaves me only one;
to struggle my way through and
keep moving- even when I'm tired.
Keep moving when I'm hurting
and all I can do is cry.

I can swallow this pill, I can open my eyes
but I can't force my mind to move
all I can do is stand up and try.
Night after night, I dream of you
night after night, remembering you.
Day after day, I wake up and cry
day after day, I still get up and try.
Long after the obituary, and all the goodbye's
after all the feasts and family have gone;
I still walk with this aching
gaping hole inside of me.
I spend hours searching for what I can
fill it with, that will even echo
the spirit of what has gone.

Sometimes it seems my soul never sleeps
so how can I lay you to rest?
How can I ever truly say goodbye
when I can't seem to find enough
ground beneath my feet, enough will
inside, where my love for you
can start to confide in me.


(This meditation on greiving for lost loved ones and personal death/trauma, and the similarities/differences between both--tnx in part to the influence lyrics of B. Harper & J. Spooner have on me as well as conversations with those close to me)