 One of the things I did when I found out Cindy only had a few months to live was to sign up for a couple of online classes to give me some structure. I knew I would need that to keep me moving forward through the grieving period. There have been times that I wished I hadn’t, but on the whole it was a wise thing to do. An assignment I had to do this week was to write poetry. It may seem strange that a woman who has written a book and keeps a blog does not see crafting words as a strong suit, but there you have it. I was not looking forward to this particular assignment. The parameters set forth for the first poem was to take a walk in nature. Walk for five minutes, stop, and take in the scene around you. Walk five more minutes and do the same. And then another five minutes and once again, soak in your surroundings. Take notes, or in my case since it was a bitterly cold day, take photos and then craft a poem from the experience. The second poem was to be constructed by a random word list generated by a software program. I got a list of ten words and needed to use at least eight of them in a poem. I thought I would share the first one here. Not because it will set the literary world on fire, but to share the healing process. Because I found that going through this actually helped a little. Here you go. The Dead of Winter The park is desolate today... gray bleak cold empty. It mirrors my heart... wintry sad raw exposed. The dead of winter. A death in winter. The landscape and my heart a frozen desert.... empty alone. Bare, barren vines and branches exposed... freezing abandoned tangled ignored. The silence is crushing, the wind is biting, tears are stinging I walk alone. In the dead of winter mourning a death in winter. Alone in the city where everyone else has the sense to stay inside through the gray bleak cold empty park. My eyes sweep to the colorless ice along the water's edge. I stop. There is movement. A muskrat foraging for food. Oblivious to me, to my thoughts, to the cold. There is life in winter In the dead of winter.   I met a friend for breakfast. Her mother had been a dear, dear friend from our college days until her death. One of the loveliest gifts she gave me was her family and we still keep in touch. As Dawn and I got caught up over tea and coffee she asked how I was doing. I’d recently lost another dear friend and two days later, another woman who’d been a spiritual mentor to me. Grief has me in its grip.
One thing I’ve experienced with grief is that it brings up older losses. Although Jan has been gone for years now, the feelings spring both fresh in this new grieving time. It all pretty much merges together. So we talked about friendship and loss, and reminisced about her mom and dad. Loss and grief is the price of love. Oh, how it hurts. But oh, how it’s worth it. We talked of that as well. Hesitantly, she asks me, “Did you get a card in the mail from me?” I hadn’t. She was. a bit frustrated with her post office branch. She’d had other mail go astray lately as well. I promised I’d let her know when it came. It came yesterday. A hand made card wishing me recovery from an illness I'd had a week ago. She’s her mother’s daughter. Creative and thoughtful, and as a nod to our mutual connection, the coffee cup was made from a scrap of a painting that had Jan’s signature on it. It warms my heart. People we love are never really gone. They leave loving reminders to us everywhere. And I am grateful. |
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July 2021
Donna KemperDonna Kemper put aside her art career to care for a mother she hadn't seen in over a decade. For seven years she followed her mother's journey into dementia, caring for her and putting forgiveness into action. Categories
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