My father has entered hospice. He has been in so much pain for so long and while he wouldn’t choose to leave his family his body isn’t giving him that option. And so, the grief journey begins for my family again. Today is the 64th anniversary of my parents’ marriage. They built a wonderful family with five children (I’m the fourth), eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. I’ll have good memories of Dad, and I’ll eventually write about them here. For now, though I’ll just tell you about one. At some point Dad developed a fascination with frog sculptures. The backyard, the deck and parts of the house ended up being filled with frogs. When I was helping to clean the house on Saturday before he came home from the hospital I spotted frog on the deck that seemed fitting. There’s a part that’s missing and won’t ever be back. And that’s going to draw our focus when we look at it. Someday we’ll be able to look at it and see and the good that still remains in our lives.
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I'm posting more of my haiku's that I wrote after Debbie passed away. Season of Mourning: She will always be missing, Season without end. These haikus are all arranged in the order in which I wrote them. They show my grief journey with all its twists and turns and ups and downs.. Celebration of Life Service Life intersections, People she has affected, Four hundred attend. Making arrangements, Visiting cemeteries, Things need to be done. 5-24-14 Twenty-fourth flowers; Her birthday gift in each month. Now what do I do? I am haunted by Words that were never spoken, Things I should have done. Stop kicking myself. Let go the mistakes I made, Then my grief worsens. Thinking back a year, Remember the beginning, And my tears still flow. Grief lessens with time. I don’t want to feel less sad About missing her. Unexpected tears. Waves of grief wash over me And leave me broken. A North Shore finding. Rock in the form of a heart, Her love’s always here. It was the hardest, They came to take her body, Taking part of me. Other people’s cures Are wonderful news for them. Where was our wonder? Prayers didn’t cure, Why did God lead us to this? And yet, still I pray. How I got through it One foot, then the other In front of the last Christmas without her – Will be hard says everyone, Like today’s easy. Reminders of her – Sad, but then I don’t forget, So they are welcome. I want to tell her About something that happened. But I can’t, she’s gone. Images from a dream – A bunch of yellow flowers, Wish I’d taken them. A hug, a walk by – Dreams of the one who was lost All coins have two sides. The coin of our love: Good times, tough times, all the time You can still spend it. Up there in heaven, We’ll see each other again; Happy to come home. Hold her in my arms, Feel her sleeping next to me. Missing her presence. She left, leaving me Alone, adrift and afraid, As I was before. Thinking of places, Spots that had meaning for her. Scattering ashes. It’s been long enough. Should be over it by now. They seem to imply. A Valentine’s Day I will visit her ashes And think about her. One year coming up. The date she transitioned. How will I react? Found in our back yard –
Wife and mother sends her love, A Valentine’s heart. In the darker hours I question my decisions And ponder what ifs. Then feels like now. It’s too vivid in my head. Going through it twice. Unfortunately, I’m living in the moment Of a year ago. Her greeting – “Debbie” Final check on her cell phone A strong sounding voice Ashes to ashes How can the world remain? Dust to dust the end The angel teacher Watches over her students Pushing for their best Toothbrush sits alone No partner in the holder Silent reminder Time’s perplexing pace Slowly it quickly flew by I’m still missing her I gave her my best Or so I thought at the time Did she think that too? Things I should have done Hindsight’s twenty-twenty Can’t see emotion She meets her children Miscarriages in heaven Additional joy It’s too depressing Please keep your grief to yourself We don’t like sad things No how was your day No conversations in bed Loneliness instead What would it be like If you were here and alive Makes me feel cheated My pain doesn’t show I walk alone with my grief Appearing normal Season of After: Grief’s just part of my story. I am not there yet. Like I said, I'm not there yet. So, these haikus are really part of my mourning. But I felt that thematically they fit better in their own season as they are looking ahead. Envisioning what the future might look like did help me on my grief journey. In the future I’ll Think of her without regrets, Recall her with joy. See what lies ahead. The last line of a haiku, Visioning my future. Alternate endings For the Season of After When I make it there: - I can be joyous. - I am not lonely. - And I am hopeful. - And God walks with me. - When I’m no longer defined By my missing love. Afterward Forever grateful: Kindness, compassion, concern Shown by so many. Haikus are a Japanese form of poetry consisting of 3 lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. I wrote earlier about having written some haikus as part of my grieving process after Debbie passed away. I’ve arranged the haikus into 4 seasons and will post them on this blog. This week I’m posting the first two seasons. Season of Before: Unknown blissful ignorance, The storm approaches. What I ended up writing for this section was not poetry, but stories of Debbie. I’ve posted some of these already as memories of Debbie. Season of Cancer: The disease defines our life, But kills only one. I’ve arranged the haikus in this section chronologically to tell the story of what happened from the first symptoms to the end. After the school year A trip up to the North Shore. Her shoulder pains grow. Tomorrow, come here. The doctor needs to see you. Worry, dread and fear. Doctor Meeting The scan saw something. Referred to oncology; They think its cancer. Grasping at Straws Just an infection, Take some antibiotics. My false fantasy. An implanted port, Pumping poison into her – Chemotherapy. Before her hair goes
We take a family picture All in shades of red. It’s spread to her brain. Now they’ll do radiation And scare us some more. Tumor markers down. They are in the normal range. Cause to celebrate. Things are going well Optimism at Christmas. Gifts for her new hair. Detached retina, The beginning of the end. She doesn’t get well. Intensive Care Her whispered whimpers, A still ghastly echo of My silent sobbing. An everyday trip, Commuting to hospital, Spending time with her. Our hopes and dreams flee. Treatments are discontinued – We enter hospice. Took her to ER Not knowing her return home Would be in hospice. A Transition A hole left behind. On Saturday, as March ends, She passes away. When my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer we started a Caring Bridge site that we used to keep people updated on Debbie’s condition. After receiving compliments on the site I decided that I would like to try to write more. So when Alicia asked me what I wanted for Christmas I mentioned a writing class. She got me a gift certificate which I used for a class. Unfortunately as I took the class Debbie took a turn for the worse and passed away.
I took another class about getting into the writing habit. I wanted to keep writing but sometimes my grief left me without the energy to spend time on anything. However, I wanted to get into the habit of committing to writing and actually doing something. So I started writing haikus. They seemed like something I could write and actually accomplish something without putting in a long time. Haikus are a Japanese form of poetry. A haiku consists of three lines. The first and last lines are five syllables each and the middle line is seven for a total of seventeen syllables. It seemed like something where I could write one poem in sitting without taxing myself. Starting haiku was hard at first. I later wrote the haiku below about that feeling. The Haikuist’s Lament Seventeen sylla- How can I express my fee- It’s not nearly e- As I worked with the form I realized it was helping me to focus my thoughts. You can’t have anything extraneous; there’s just no room in the poem. It helped me to get my thoughts and emotions on paper. It allowed me to express my grief and deal with my memories. Some of my earlier poems were titled. It was a way to sneak in some extra syllables. After all, “Celebration of Life Service” would take up most of the poem leaving me with no room to say anything about it. Eventually I stopped titling the poems, it felt a little like cheating to get the extra syllables. As I kept working with haikus I found the answer to the Haikuist’s Lament. You may find out that Seventeen pieces of words Can say a whole lot Several months after I started I was reading a book of haikus. I read that haiku poems have a season word in them. My poems also had seasons. But not the annual seasons of nature, rather they were the seasons of illness and death. I arranged them into four seasons with an introductory haiku for each. The Season of Before is our life together before Debbie’s cancer. The Season of Cancer tells of the time Debbie’s symptoms started to appear until she died. The Season of Mourning is the story of my grief journey. The Season of After is me envisioning my future. I'll be posting each season on the blog at a later date. Every grief journey is different, but being able to express grief in some way is important. Being able to write things down was an important part of my journey which still continues. |
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