To my Mother and Father

I speak your names into the quiet,

hoping for a celestial sign ~

Fully knowing it to be wishful thinking ~

this yearning that I could summon you back...

just so I can remember the warmth

your living once made possible.

I want so desperately to tell you ~~~

that the world is thinner now without you.

That even sunlight feels like a betrayal to your memory...

I am alive...why aren't you here too...

Did trying too hard to nurture us

send you home far too early...

I know your fight for survival had been an especially hard one

there were so many of us, so many souls to mend and tend.

~~~~~

Still~~~I feel your presence ever so often --

it's as if you are trying to touch me through a veil.

You never had the time to individually teach us unruly brood

how to stand,

how to listen for the truth beneath the noise,

how to carry ourselves with a steadiness we could master~~

But I learned to fight for myself...maybe therein lies the lesson

I need you to know that I appreciate your efforts better now.

I did not understand until you were gone,

the great cross that you bore, raising us.

I know now though ~ you did the best that you could,

you fought the fight with the armour life equipped you with.

~~~~~

So now...I walk with your echoes.

Some days they are brightly lit lanterns.

Some days they are heavy stones.

Yet they both come from a place of love.

~~~~~~

If there is a place where you rest,

may it be gentle.

If there is a place where you watch,

may you know I am still learning

how to live the lessons you left behind.

~~~~~

And if there is nothing but this -

this breathing, this ache, this gratitude ~~

then let this elegy be the home

I build for you in my heart.

~~~~~

Do I think that I cherished you enough

when you were here with us.

No. I don't think that I did.

But, just maybe I did the best that I could.

Youth, they say...it's wasted on the young.

I wanted you to be what I wanted you to be...

~~~~~

I wish that I could bring a polished requiem...

one that speaks of everything sad, yet wonderful.

But I only bring the ache, the love, and the shape of the silence you left behind.

So, until then, here’s a way to open the door - a way that honors parents with tenderness, dignity, and the complexity of grief which may become my companion...lovingly.

Just know...that it will never be a replacement for you.

Rest well.