Me, 1962-2012

May it be so, may it be so.
May it mercifully be so.

Missing you always

It always hits you. Again and again it hits you, the sense of loss.

You do things--wake up, fix the trash, come home--and remember how it used to be when she was there, your baby, your baby.

How terribly empty life has been since she died, how terribly ugly it has been.

Every day is a reminder of what you've lost and what will never be again.

The desolation is immense, seemingly endless.

There is no mercy in surviving.

"Say Goodbye": A poem for Vixen, of Vixen, seven months after her death

How do you say goodbye? When do you do so?

Do you say it when your love is buried,

unable to hear, cremated, or earlier, too weak,

maybe too delirious to hear?

Perhaps you say it when you know death is real: it is inevitable,

and goodbye must be said—if only to unhearing ears,

as sight and hearing and understanding are gone.

Will your love understand your touch,

the pain throbbing through your fingers and the unseen tears?

Will your love comfort you when your love knows only pain?

How do you say goodbye?

How can you?

Life suddenly is nothing, meaning only life is gone

or will be, when your own hearing and seeing and your breath are gone.

How do you say goodbye

to your love who is to die?

How do you say it when goodbye offers you no comfort,

just the realization:

your life, your love, is dead.

###

Ugly, ugly world

My dearest Vixen.

What an ugly world this his been since you left. I hate waking up. I hate the days. I look forward only to those two hours of drink and solitude I have each day away from home, six beers and two shots of scotch in a bar before heading back home...each day without you, each night without you.

This is life now. It is hardly life.

Every time I sleep I think of never waking, but I always do.

This is life now. It is a daily torment.