miss you

[SmileGRL]

your mathematical philosophical mind
your race car driver heart
your soft woolly sweater comfort
your goofy love for life grin
your never ending patience fueled by love
your enthusiasm contagious

you spread inspiration like fRagrant fLower seeds
“go for it.” “don’t be scared.” “i believe in you.”

you
you
yOu

brotherfloweR pluCked form my garden

i’m going to miss everything about you…

[mnaz]

my heart goes out to you, Smile. I know how much it hurts to lose flowers from your garden.

[SmileGRL]

hi mr. nazzy. thanks for hearing me. my heart is very sad, specially for his wife and kids who will feel his loss the most. we shared a history of heart ache, fear, frustration and survival and he grew up to be a really good human being, inspiring, respected and loved.

[stilltrucking]

I forget how shakespeare said it
I have to google it to get it right but something like
"everyone can bear a grief except he who has it."

That thing about time and death and imortality, 'biocentrism'

I knowthis may sound glib
but it is true
you are blessed to have the poetry
to keep his life going in you

It is terrible not to be able to mourn
Like being freeze framed in the same loop day after day
unable to move on with my life.
,
it has been over twenty? years since I mourned anyone
but time has made realize I have her still with me.
I spent ten years in a zombie numbness because I could not mourn
I finally found the courage
and solace and poetry

inFriendship
jt.

[stilltrucking]

"Everyone can master a grief but he that hath it."

http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtop ... 37&t=17932

Sorry about the ramble
I realize you were not looking for advice
I was trying to bear witness.

[SmileGRL]

jack, you are a witness in the best way you have to offer. i truly appreciate that.

two things...

(1) my mother in law said something to me that i will carry with me navigating through life and death. we were talking about how sad i was about not being able to go home and be with my loved ones and she said, no matter where we are, with or without loved ones, grief is something we have to battle alone. we can cry on each others shoulders and we can talk, but in the end we have to make peace with it inside.

and (2) my own mother is one of those people that does not cry. (not even when her mom died) maybe alone at night when no one's there, but while the rest of us are all crying whenever we talk, she remains businesslike and upbeat and as if it's just another day and she's just witnessing, giving running commentary. it freaks me out sometimes. i want her to cry and rage and feel something. here's the thing though, she does feel something. she's just dealing with things her way. and in her own time. or maybe she's freeze framed too like you were. (grief/mourning has its own rhythm...i just wrote a poem about that and came here to post it after i reply here)

actually i have a (3) too...i am sorry for your loss, jack, even ten or twenty years plus. and glad that you found solace. (yes, there is a lot of solace in poetry and art and friendship)

my cousin send me a message on facebook this morning (i haven't answered her back yet), in which she said how other people were foolish to say there is healing in time. she said it doesn't get better over time, it gets worse. and when i read your reply, i thought, it's not that the missing or the loss ever gets better (the older you get the more you realize what you've lost), but that the intensity of the pain lessens as the shock blows over and you find acceptance that it was their time. whether you mourned or not, you wake up one day and the numbness is gone.

for me there is still lots of crying and sad moments and a pain so deep it's unreal. but for the most part, i have accepted that it was his time. some days i am frozen with grief and other days i find comfort in poetry or painting and in the words and thoughts of friends and loved ones.

so thank you.

[jim turner]

Love and grief all in one poem is not easy, especially when they are real and not imagined. Excellent. jim

[SmileGRL]

thank you very much

[stilltrucking]

she will always be 14 in my memory of her.
but I never cried for her she was nothing to me
just a friend.
whose death I felt responsible for.
And I sought redemption

I always thought
redemption was a given

30 years from anything

we are like clocks struck dumb
a harsh and bitter chord that
sends it's ripple down
tomorrow's spine

we are like her friends
a portrait of enchanted
intentions

past like rivers
hold forever
spellbound


— k~
http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtop ... shit+storm

I used to pray that I would die before my siblings, I could not stand the thought of their deaths.

We, my siblings and I are so much older than your family.
every time we see each other I bear in mind it could be the last.

I suppose I was thinking about Plath and Freud,
And how the act of poetry
heals.
He said the poet, or artist is blessed by their creativity.
I don't know
I am not a poet I don't think
I limp along

Yes an excellent poem
thank you

[SmileGRL]

if her death left you numb for so many years, she was not nothing to you. why did you feel responsible for her death? (you don't have to answer this question.) guilt is often one of the reasons people feel stuck in the mourning process because if they acknowledge and accept that person's death, if they mourn for that person, they have to deal with whatever is causing their feelings of guilt or shame or whatever and that is often too painful. so they create this numb (safe) world around them in order to survive, but are unable to really move on.

I used to pray that I would die before my siblings, I could not stand the thought of their deaths.

(a) this makes me want to hug you, jack. it is human to want to avoid pain and loss.
(b) some people say we get what we ask for. "be careful what you ask for, you may just get it," they say. but sometimes i think we get the exact opposite...that's when you have to ask yourself if a wish such as that were made from a place of unwaveringly believing you will get what you asked for or from a place of fear, in which case the saying goes, "you attract what you fear." apparently it's one of the laws of the universe. and sometimes it freaks me out.
(c)...my maternal grandmother had this wish about dying...she always said she didn't want to die alone or suffer. she died instantaneously from coronary thrombosis (blood clot) at a tea party while socializing with friends. one moment she was offering a cup of tea to a friend the next she was dead on the floor. she got her wish.

i'm sorry that i keep answering you with numbered paragraphs or (a's) and (b's)...it's just that my mind runs on different threads at the same time and sometimes it confuses other people when i jump from one to another. plus it helps me to keep my thoughts straight.

yes, art and poetry heals. i have called them my therapists many times.

thanks for reading and for being willing to talk about the deep stuff. i send you a (((hug)))