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.

###

Almond, December 16, 1994-June 2, 2007: Remembering my baby, now five years gone

It's been a sad day from the start. Five years ago, also on a Saturday, I lost my baby, my Comebaby, my Almond, my Mondy, my Alimondmond.

Five years to the day. I weep as I write this.

I saw you die, one twist and you were gone. I thought you were just stretching, but then you were gone. You were sick for about two weeks, red discharge coming out of your vagina. That last day, you ran out and vomitted, you wouldn't eat. You had lumps all over, said the vet. Then you were gone, just like that.

My baby, how could I have survived all these years without you? I guess I had Vixen for consolation, a reason t live, to smile, to laugh. Now even Vixen is gone.

I miss you so much, my Comebaby, and the tears keep coming.

Oh how I wish I were with you again, if only in death. No need for an afterlife, just to be with you in nonexistence, gone together, as we were in life together.

My dearest Almond, my dearest Comebaby. Why am I not with you in the bliss of death?