Seven Years - A Journey Through Grief

 Seven Years – A Journey Through Grief

We’ve all seen the faces in newsprint and on the television screen,
Empty, hollow, tear and mud-streaked,
Defiant, angry, hungry baby-bird beaked mouths,
Bodies bent, shuffling, picking their way
through the muddy remains after a flood
the likes of which no one has ever seen before.

It is the same with tornadoes, fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes.
Every storm that nature hurls against the fragile structures of human life
Leaves somebody sifting through ash and mud, bones and blood,
Looking for some tangible something to hold onto;
Some touchstone, some key we believe we need to unlock truth and memories.

Your life and death brought storms bigger than anything nature has ever wrought,
and oh, baby girl, there was nothing natural about it.
I spent a long time moving through the broken, messy, shattered pieces
of your being, your existence, of myself
With that same defiance, the emptiness, and hunger,
looking for the touchstone that would bring you back to me.
I wallowed in mud baths of truth.
I built a temple of ash and made mosaics from scraps, but they were as empty as
Vision boards made from magazine cutouts run through a shredder,
Memories clouded by smoke from the fires of my anger
And held at bay by floods of rage.

I cannot tell you how it happened, but
something finally shifted on this dirty road to healing.
I don’t care what they say, there is nothing pure or holy or
 light-filled about grieving a life when terrible truths tarnish its memories.
But somehow, the light comes if the rage burns away
before it nukes the seeker's soul.

And so, it did, and so it is, and
so here I am, finally and clearly seeing
the light of her love brightening the darkness.