Happy Birthday Merry Katherine! ~Poem~ "Death's Chalk Line"

Death’s Chalk Outline

Your birthday is coming;

How old would you be?

(You’re still only 19 to me!)

Yet your 32nd birthday is coming!

That’s 13 years I’ve missed with you!!!

How do we fare with the loss of you?

My sadness pervades

Long before your birthday comes…

Grief takes on a life of its own,

Manifesting in my body well before

March 29th comes.

It took me a while to know why I was sad:

The body “knows” before the “knowledge” is had.

Life was frenetic for months before

It all slowed to a stop when I entered Grief’s shore.

Where did all of these years go?

It seems these 13 years were plundered!

Yes, our lives went on (as if in a sleep walk)

But in our hearts, the dark storm clouds still thundered

As if leaving a chalk outline around our hearts,

with our lives now totally plundered.

13 years now, yet the loss never ends…

It manifests in our body as stagnant clouds with no wind.

We still walk, and we talk, yet our hearts never mend.

So it oft feels we are mummies,

lifeless to the end…

13 years now, yet still, it feels like yesterday.

(Non-grievers never could begin to understand

how we are alive, yet still we are slain…)

We walk and we talk, and act like we’re alive

But somewhere deep down in our bodies, 

we know beyond knowing 

that we’ll never thrive.

So here comes your birthday

And where will I be?

Just look for the chalk outline 

manifest in me.

("Death's Chalk Outline ~Angie Bennett Prince, 2/28/2019) 

May God bless each of you,

Angie

~Thanks to Carol Whiseant Rowe of Treasured Sisters for Merry Katherine's birthday picture!