His Legacy

They say he took his own life

Like she once tried to do

But where she was saved

By miracle or luck

(I’ll take the former)

He succumbed

To leave that everlasting question:

Why...

He passed on

Like we all must one day

Leaving too soon it seems, too young

Leaving children behind

Children old enough to have given him grandkids

But too young to have tried.

He passed on before that empty-nest-hope for grandkids could sneak in.

Yet she

Who once tried to take her own life—

She who got a second chance—

She lives and begins to feel that empty-nest-hope stir.

She lives and dreams and hopes and plans.

She works and suffers and fails and cries.

She calls her son at 1 a.m.
                                 With tears in her voice
                                                               Asking if he heard the news

He, who was close by after she met those bright unblinking eyes

                                           On top that unforgiving asphalt

He, who came on that horrible task to pick up her car

                                           Abandoned at the side of the highway

He, who came to talk to a baffled husband wondering
                                           What did he do wrong?—What signs did he miss?

He, who came to talk to a father with no way of explaining impossibilities

                                           To children confused and afraid

He, who offered to help in a situation most would flee from,

He, who waded into the incomprehensible mess of it all

And offered a warm hand,

Is gone.

His hand is cold and sapped of strength

He has left his family and this world behind
                                            But he is not dead.

For he was there for a man at the height of a freefall

A husband who had left all he understood behind

A father falling through thin air grasping for something that makes sense.

He was there for a family in the disarray of impossible chaos—

The impossible that somehow was

He reached out and was there.

And there he remains.

His legacy lives on

In the warmth of a father’s hands

In the tears of a mother’s eyes

In a son’s trust

In a daughter’s love

In the family he helped to heal

He lives on.

His death is still a heavy thing to bear

A weight too large to understand.

So shed your healing tears

And wail out your confusion—

The whys that heave out your chest—

But after the rawness passes

When the memories still remain

Remember he still lives in my family

And in all who he touched in their pain.

Ode to the Soldiers

The bells! The bells, they toll for victory

Hard fought and won upon the heaping fields

Of mud scorched black by emptied armories

And blood of bodies brave who would not yield.

To them, to them they toll for all but naught

Who fought and died there in the worst of hell

Those dead; the brightest of the hope-lit souls

To walk the twilight of ’shrined progress fraught

With blinding pride and hubris great to knell

The gongs of war: the bells, the bells, they toll.

And throbbing now upon November air

A cry goes up and mingles with their sound

A scream of joy, perhaps, or bold fanfare

To ’nounce the end of war and loud expound

Relief for lengthy tension snapped at last.

Yet there among the joyous clamor bright

A sorrow note clashes ’gainst glad revel

Dragged slow through sky, its wake: a silence vast

Just broken by a wailing wordless fright

Of dreaded news now brought long to level

A heavy blow upon the grief-bent head

Of one lone mother who long wrote and hoped

To see her son return from war to wed

The girl who short would find her throat tight groped

By wracking tears and strangled falling moans.

The bells toll hollowly for past-known sons

When war yet won is lost when best is burned

On pyres of pride and greed that flaming groans

Beneath the weight of sacrifice in tons:

The lives not lived and futures never learned.

The bells! The bells, will ring for something bright

When men and sons will die for more than naught

They go forth bravely who for others fight

And stand upon freed lands that their blood wrought

Where peace will spread across a land once bound

In fears, despair and mercy lacked by those

Who led for gain to self and not the whole.

Those men who died in wars some base, some sound

By duty called decisive they arose

To fellows guard and reach the crucial goal.

The bells! The bells, still toll for mothers' sons

And daughters brave who gave their essence all

Against the threat and thund’ring of the guns

And raging death where they did lastly fall.

So lift the mothers and the dead sons high

And Daughters, fathers we remember too

Write fading names upon your mournful soul

Lest we forget the past in last goodbyes;

Do not erase that bleak November view

Of fallen souls for whom the bells, the bells,

They toll.

(On this Remembrance Day I dedicate this poem to all those who serve, or have served, in the military. Also, I dedicate this to all those who have relatives who serve or have served. Your sacrifices will not be forgotten.)

Our Loss (Leavetakings II)

 

She was surrounded by those who love her

Her life stretched behind her like a red carpet

Leading onwards and upwards

It could have been much longer

But it got into her bones

It stole into her lungs

And robbed us of her

She was gone but not into the dark

She had left the shadowland

To live in fields of light and warmth unknown

Leaving us darkbound, black clad grievers

To ponder mourning

I know

And he knew

Grandson

And son

“How did you mourn her?”

Someone so good, so pure

Yet so aware that she was not

Aware of the stained rags she wore

Yet still smiling upwards into the face of heaven

How do you mourn her?

When she is somewhere better

And you are left alone?

I don’t know how

I cried at the celebration of her life

That euphemism stuck to my tongue

Like the hot wax of the candles burning by her coffin

I cried because I miss her

Because I will not hear her warm sonorous voice again

Because she will not wake me up

By gently rubbing my back

I mourned the loss of her

I mourned the state of the world without her

I did not mourn for her

For what she might miss

She traded her ashes for gold

“I don’t know if I ever properly mourned her”

He said

Son to grandson

And I understood