Wednesday's Woe - Contrasts

I guess by now I should know enough about loss

that you never really stop missing someone.

You just have to live around 

the huge gaping hole in their absence.

Wednesday's Woe

Contrasts

I saw an old friend from an earlier day ~

You know, from those days before . . .

In talking together ~ it was a "contrasts" display:

Them, with their grand babies and great-grand babies galore,

And us, with our lives spent 'round the huge gaping hole…

Just trying to breathe as we hole-up, away.

Their lives so normal, they were so happy and whole,

Delighted by family, as we were one day…

Of course I went through many of our joys:

Our grand baby girl, head full of black curls,

Our daughter-in-law who is a delight, the lives and the antics of our boys,

And what we are doing amidst missing our baby girl...

Our private practice and the grief blog we keep,

My friend struggled with words about the blessing that must be...

What to talk about in the civilian world

When my life revolves around grieving my deceased baby girl?

'Tis a contrast of light and dark,

Life so full versus life so stark,

Numbers of babies

Versus those that will never be...

Young loves and marriages

Versus those that will never be…

Families thriving versus ours so bereaved…

The looks on their faces to remember the little one we grieve:

She was just a wee tot when last they saw her,

So full of life, with so much life still ahead for her…

So, what do you talk about when their faces drop?

There's just not much to say when your own world has stopped.

How do I share with them that though my daughter brings sadness, she brings joy too,

That my life is forever changed because I was able to hear, "Mommy, I love you too!"

How do I share yes, though my tears ever flow,

I am happy I have a daughter I am able to love so?

How do I share, I am blessed of all mothers,

because I know my beloved child is with God though it leaves me a grieving mother?

This world is too short and the time is too brief

To tell the world how much I love my baby girl is defined by my grief?!

So what do you talk about with civilians of Grief's War?

It's too much a contrast of worlds when they've never been forced to walk with their child through Death's Door. . .

Since you left my heart is BROKEN, 

but because you were once here, 

it's completely filled with LOVE.

~Carly Marie Dudley

~Picture, by Luminous Light

~~~~~

"You will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through. It's like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly---that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp."

~Anne Lamott

~Missing Loved Ones

~~~~~

"And can it be that in a world so full and busy the loss of one creature makes a void so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of eternity can fill it up."

~Charles Dickens

~The Empty Chair

Top Picture, thanks to ~The Empty Chair via ~Missing Loved Ones
Poem - Contrasts - Angie Bennett Prince - 2/5/2013