for B
The day after you died,
everyone was you.
Every man behind a counter,
every woman on a phone,
every child, every grandmother,
every stranger in the airport,
every driver on the highway.
Every voice was your voice.
Every face was your face.
Who else, I wondered, was
certain they could not live
another moment? Not knowing
the answer, I imagined love
carrying all our fragile,
floating hearts. I had never
been more certain of
the holiness of everyone.
This, the gift you gave me.
When I arrived home, I lit
a candle. It was your name
I said into the flame,
wishing you peace.
It was you I wept for,
you I wished for.
And you were everyone.
Posts Tagged ‘suicide’
The Gift
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, fragile, love, suicide on December 12, 2025| 2 Comments »
Getting Close
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dance, grief, love, mother, photograph, son, suicide on May 28, 2024| 15 Comments »
In the photo he is dancing,
his arms a strong diagonal,
his tie flying forward
even as he comes to a still point
balanced for a moment
on the toes of his tap shoes,
his body a lightning bolt
in a crisp white shirt.
I focus on his face,
see the will it takes
to make his body stop in time,
see his easy smile,
the invitation in his eyes,
a blend of pride and play.
I lean in until his face is a blur,
as if by coming closer,
I might feel the breath
that isn’t there, breathe in
the warmth of his being.
I love entering
this photo sometimes,
or more rightly,
love the way this photo
enters me until
I ring with the truth
of how it is to love
this boy who did not
become a man,
this boy who chose
to make his body
stop in time,
this lightning bolt
captured on film,
unpredictable, powerful,
something no one
could hold forever,
this love that strikes me
every time I think of him,
I still feel it, the charge.
A Letter to the Graduates
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged graduation, grief, joy, loss, paradox, suicide on June 2, 2023| 12 Comments »
Delivered at the Telluride High School Graduation, June 2, 2023 I don’t know how to make sense of the story of how Finn is here, although he is not. How he lives in the deep soil of memory— still running with you through the playground your bodies bright streaks of joy, cartwheeling across the green valley floor and tap dancing on this stage, traveling with you to Mesa Verde and Ecuador and building computers and graphing equations and writing code, swinging golf clubs and debating politics and dressing as a skyscraper in the Halloween parade. Laughing in the hall and crying in his room. I don’t know how it is we can crumple with grief and still rise with hope, love, celebration. And yet we do. At the same time he is missed, you, friends, grow more fully into yourselves each one of you a sapling reaching not only toward light but also reaching with your roots through the dark, the necessary dark that anchors us, keeps us rooted in what’s real. I don’t know how it is we come to know our own lives better because he took his, but we do. We learn to trust that despite a great wound, we can thrive, the way a tree grows around a gash, trunk still strong, though a scar remains, leaves still unfurling to gather sun. I don’t know how we speak of sadness and joy in the same breath, but we do. Joy in coming together. Joy in knowing heartbreak invites us to become more spacious, more kind. Joy in forging new dreams. Joy in remembering the world as it was and at the same time growing so bravely, so beautifully into the world that is. |
Before
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, love, suicide, time on March 13, 2022| 4 Comments »
Before the gun,
before the dark,
before the conversation
broke, before
I knew there would be
a before, there was
a love that touched
it all. That is the one thing
that hasn’t changed.
Not the End
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, poem, poetry, reading, suicide on July 12, 2018| Leave a Comment »
And as the demon prison is opened,
it’s already half past ten, and my daughter
and I have already read an hour past her bedtime,
but the demon prison is open, and so
I promise just ten more minutes, but then,
at ten forty, our hero is clashing swords
with the demon who betrayed him
and so we read on to the demon’s demise.
Just yesterday I spoke with a friend
who told me she thought about killing herself.
We sat in the garden surrounded by cosmos
and overly abundant chard.
Life is not like the book where we know
there will be a happy ending,
which makes it harder
to want to turn the page.
Tonight, when we put down the book,
just as the next demon taunts
our hero, we turn off the lights
and feel the giddiness of the battle
pulsing through our bodies.
We giggle too loud and shudder
beyond our control. It is difficult
to find enough peace in ourselves
to welcome sleep.
How we long to turn just one more page,
just one more page.
May we always find reasons
to go on, believing that
something good is about to happen.
I may not believe in happy endings,
but I do believe in happiness,
the way it finds us when we least
expect it. Like the zinnia in my garden
that for months has looked shriveled and dead
since a spring frost, and just today,
after the big rains,
formed four green leaves.
After Hearing She Took Her Life
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, grief, poem, poetry, suicide on August 19, 2017| 6 Comments »
Before the sadness comes the shock,
like snow falling on sunflowers,
like nightfall at noon. And then
the tears catch up. And then
the wondering, What could I have done?
The urge to hold her now that I cannot.
The ache to hold her daughter, to hold
her son the way that she once held
my children when they were young.
What is there to do now but cradle
each other, to cry, to recover, and again
to shudder, to cry. To say to each other
that this day it hurts to be alive.
To notice that despite grief,
the larkspur are in full blue.
The river curls notes around the rocks.
The bees immerse their bodies
in snapdragon blooms.
How it’s never been more important
to know this—that the world
is beautiful. That even as we’re held
by tragedy, here is tenderness.
Here, always waiting to be opened,
the invitation to love.
On the Street, at the Edge of Evening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, suicide on October 7, 2016| 7 Comments »
I am sorry to be so deep, he says,
his voice broken. The shade
pools around us as we speak.
He tells me of his surgeries,
then notes the gold in the leaves.
My teacher, he says, he took his life.
I wonder at the light that seems
to infuse the difficult words.
He was my hero, he says.
You Were Taught to Take Chances
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged doubt, edge, map, moving through doubt, poem, poetry, suicide on August 15, 2012| 4 Comments »
When you stand on the ledge
six stories above the street,
you are perhaps lost, but
there is not a lot a map can tell you.
There is back in the window,
and there is down.
What is it that keeps you
from jumping.
You wouldn’t even need to jump.
Just trip. Lean. Step. Or if you sneeze,
it could be considered an accident.
Somehow easier that way to imagine it,
but how to explain the fact that you
climbed through the pane
out onto the railingless edge.
Someone would have to clean up
the splatter. That thought
is enough to hold you here,
back against the brick.
It’s not that you want to die.
Below, the cars crisscross and merge.
But how to go on living.
Beneath you the ravens weave.