Saturday's Sayings ~In Loving Memory~ Another Child-Loss Parent Lost to Grief…

Tom Calvert with his son David

Saturday's Sayings

~In Loving Memory~

Another Child-Loss Parent Lost to Grief…

David Calvert

Tom Calvert

Heroin

Heroin took my son took him far away
I found him on his bed so dead as he lay
Eyes closed in sleep spoon on night stand
Bloody foam in mouth with needle in his hand
This vision haunts my dreams keeps me from sleep
What sin did I commit that this is what I reap
It’s hard to close my eyes so many tears I’ve cried
Thought I was a good dad and know I really tried
Where did it all go wrong that I must feel this pain
I’d give up my own life just to see him once again
To hold him in my arms and tell him of my dreams
Tell him how I love him in frustration I do scream
There’s no turning back these cruel hands of time
How stupid I must be trying to capture this in rhyme
There’s just no explaining the feelings in my heart
I want to live again but don’t know where to start

Written 02/18/10 by: Thomas Patrick Calvert

Like · · Unfollow Post · September 6

Tom Calvert

On May 25th it will be two years...............I still cry every day.

Like · · Follow Post · May 16

David Calvert

Tom Calvert

Another Night

You were only twenty-three on the day you died

And since that fateful day each night I have cried

Another endless night streaming out my tears

As I think of you dead and all the stolen years

Haunting screams I hear in the middle of the night

My dreams blown away like a broken string kite

So beautiful you were in oh so many ways

It’s hard here now without you these are empty days

I miss your gleaming smile and the light in your eyes

I ache for your laughter and the times we shared a cry

I want to cook you crab cakes and see you fall in love

I want to see you happy and I pray you are Above

I want to see you marry and hold your precious child

I’m sorry I must stop I have to cry awhile

Written 07/08/ 2010 by: Thomas Patrick Calvert

Like · · Follow Post · August 10

I belong to several grief groups on the internet. In the ten months in which I have been active in these groups, I have seen 3 mothers succumb to their grief over their child's death by taking their own lives. Yesterday, I learned of the death of a child-loss father whom I had gotten to know through his very poignant poems. Eleven days ago on 10/3/11, I put onto my blog post a poem called "Empty" that Tom Calvert had written about his child-loss grief. Best I can tell, that was the last poem Tom would put on the internet before he succumbed to his grief and took his own life on October 8, 2011, just last Saturday. I am heart-broken over this loss, another precious parent grieving a child, buried down under his load of grief, and gone too soon… The final words of Tom's last-entered poem were these:

I pray to you Jesus please touch your Hand to me.

The words I had written to Tom over these past two months I've known him and his response are all below:

After I first read Tom's poem "Heroin," my heart went out to him, and I sensed the desperate cry within his soul, so I wrote the following note to him under his poem:

Angie Prince ‎{{{Tom}}} I am so sorry for your loss of your precious son and the angst of the images in your head. Some of the traumatic visuals that were attached to our children's death can be very effectively "resolved" with a new treatment available called EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). I am a therapist so I am very aware of its availability and its success although I am not trained yet to do it. But my best friend in grief who lives in California had it done over the images of her child's suicide, as did her husband and her son, and it was very effective for all three of them. It does not remove the memory, as you need your memories. It takes the toxicity out of it so that you can better function, and puts the memory back into the past where it belongs rather than as an ongoing trauma for you. (The trauma does not need to be in the present for there is nothing we can do for our child now (so the terrorizing pain that you have no longer has a useful purpose now), so the trauma can be effectively treated now to help you to be soothed and to be better able to function.) {I hope this makes sense! You might want to google EMDR to learn more about how it works! Thank you so much for sharing your poem; it is very helpful for me to articulate my pain through poetry as well. (We lost our 19-yr-old daughter 5 years ago in a terrible car crash with friends, in which 3 of the 5 teens were killed.) May God bless you and comfort you in your deep loss and your deep pain. September 11 at 12:09am · Like Then I read his other poems as he put them out in the sequence in which I have them ordered here. When I got to his poem, "Empty," I wrote the following to Tom, and he responded back:

Angie Prince Tom, I am "lovingly lifting" your very poignant poem to share with my blog readers. May God bless and comfort you in your deep, deep pain over your loss of your precious son David, and like your poem says, may Jesus, our Loving Lord, indeed touch His Hand to you and your broken heart. You may find my child-loss grief blog (where my husband and I post of walking through our deep grief over the loss of our precious 19-yr-old daughter Merry Katherine) at

http://MotherGrievingLossofChild.blogspot.com/

~ Thank you for sharing your heart with us. October 3 at 8:36pm · Like

Tom Calvert Thank you Angie. The thought that anything I write because of my loss being used to help anyone who has suffered a similar loss is always welcome. I write because it just comes to me. It does not belong to me and you are welcome to share anything I write with anyone who you think may benefit from my words. I claim no rights ownership to any of it. If it helps one person; I have done something good from the worst tragedy I have ever suffered. God Bless you. October 3 at 10:05pm · Unlike · 2 people

Angie Prince Thank you again Tom, you are very gracious. And may God bless you as well, and may He hold you close to His heart.

October 4 at 11:31pm · Like

I pray tonight that, indeed, God heard Tom's plea, "Jesus please touch your Hand to me" and that our God is holding Tom close to His heart tonight. And I pray for each of us child-loss grievers, that we will avail ourselves to the gentle love of God for His loving comfort and sustenance for the rest of our earthly journey.

I added these comments under Tom's poems after his death, the first one upon just finding out on Wednesday, the 12th, that Tom had killed himself on Saturday, October 8th:

Angie Prince Karen, Thank you for sharing with us; I am so saddened and shocked by Tom's death. His poems touched my heart for his deep loss and depth of pain. I too pray for his family as now they grieve two precious lives. I pray that He was met by God's loving arms. I am simply stunned. May we all reach out to one another in our pain; and may we all meet one another with kindness as we never know the depths of pain that may be there. ~Much love to you all~ Wednesday at 11:29pm · Like · 1 person

Angie Prince I am so sorry we lost Tom to his deep grief. I barely knew him (through Facebook), but felt I knew him through his poems. And now to lose him is so, so sad. God, please help us all; our grief is so heavy to bear. RIP Tom.

6 hours ago · · 1 person

~R.I.P. Tom and David~

Pictures, thanks to Tom Calvert via TheCompassionateFriends/Atlanta, Facebook