GRIEF ... MY JOURNEY

     
          Grief ... My Journey      by Marggie Rassler

           This is a continuation of processing grief ... the grief of
dealing with my mother's recent death. At first I didn't want to let go, even of the memories of the night she died. She experienced cardiac arrest.

I felt that if I let go of those memories she would slip away from me. The acute sense of her fading from my life and memory became very painful. So I made myself relive it again and again. That, holding on to sadness, is depicted in my previous poem. After I was willing to let her go and worked at letting the memories normally drift  away, in came other companions of grief. Those brought in  thoughts of when will the next shoe drop? Who's next? Sudden death smacked me with the sober realization ... life is fragile. 

   I took out some of my books that deal with grief. I was glad to see what I experienced and I am experiencing is normal.
   
    Remember the stages of grief I mentioned before? I think some of those stages run through this poem.
    It's surprising to me when I check the statistics of who reads my humble blog, the diversity of countries that read it. Friend, whoever you are, if you're going through grief you're not alone. Again, I hope and pray this helps in some way.

           

        Grief .. My Journey    by Marggie Rassler

        

Grief has pals.

Along with him

come Doubt and Fear.

Doubt trickles in,

softly playing

notes of tearful harp,

lulling me,

into the selfish arms

of sirens of Despair.

 

Fear sings grey tunes

of futures without suns,

And paints portraits

of empty vases of flowers.

He wraps his arm around

Doubt and laughs while I,

Stare at the final numbers

inscribed on tombstone.

 

Grief....