Poetry
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Reflections From Life Itself
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Not too many weeks after Missy had died, but after the intense grief — the paralyzing grief — the physical grief —
had subsided to the point one could
breathe and speak and eat, I thought back upon those first minutes and hours, even the first days, and an inexplicable thought
occurred to me: The intensity of the feeling — the relentlessness of it —
seemed somehow proper, as an outward tangible expression of the depth of love felt for this dear daughter now gone.
It was certainly the most intense all-encompassing experience I had ever had.
During that time, several
friends kindly visited to sit, pray, listen, and talk, and in the process of these visits it became clear that the unavoidable "Why?" question was pointless, and
that many people intuitively know the ways to be around grieving parents: sitting with; listening to; crying with; remembering together the person that Missy
was, the things she loved and the ways we loved her. We realized that a new normal
was to be our future, a normal that would include deeper empathy and
sensitivity, yes, but also a deeper understanding of what it means to trust God.
It was in those first months,
as I thought back on those earliest hours and first days, the desire to memorialize the intensity,
to remember it, to write it down so that I would always know that it was real, came upon me.
This poem, this lament, raw as it is, and bounded as it is by the limitations of language, was borne of those thoughts, of the desire to not forget.
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Saturday evening, April 10, 1999
Every thought begins and ends in darkness and despair.
Sadness and death have relegated joy to a distant and inaccessible place.
That word which I heard echoes and resounds without mercy: Killed. Killed.
I am held captive by its grip. Its talons torture me: Killed. Killed.
Fear and dread join despair in my sinking heart.
My body is numb — no, my body is absent — I am reduced to only a point of space and time, and that point has no meaning — its sole purpose is to drown in the pain and agony of this death.
The raw and unadulterated aching in my soul is interrupted by no thought other than the dark disbelief of my daughter's death.
Death — my daughter's death — floods my very being with an immensely powerful and overwhelming mind-numbing soul-exploding hurt.
Abandoned, adrift, alone. I weep and sob and stare as I wait for the pain to abate.
My waiting is not answered, my pain is unremitting, and my soul is about to burst.
God is absent — How could He be a part of this death scene? — and my heart longs to have Him by my side.
—SRB - May, 1999
Remembering Missy
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