241 - Remembering

I have been thinking a lot about my dad lately. He’s been gone over 24 years: I’ve lived more of my life without than with him. I long for him to know E.G.’s husband, Mario, who is a musician like he was. It is a gentler longing than the bitter grief I felt at E.G.’s birth just three months after his death. Somehow I hope he has always been aware of what has happened to me since his passing, that he knows the force he still plays in my life.

Two Hundred Forty-One

Remembering

Time softens the grief of memory,
Your strength, Divine Comforter, the shoulder
I rest upon. You ease me with time,
Passing days and years provide solace.

I do not forget the details of love;
Instead You blunt the agony of loss,
The pain receding like birth pangs
When the infant is safely delivered.

Send me my loved one’s guiding presence,
Let their life message be my heart’s ease;
They are alive in my noblest deeds,
Let them keep watch over all my actions.