loss Archives - Mindful Hours

Where Have You Been Billy Boy?

Jun 172017

I don’t know why I had the thought,
what I heard or saw or … what triggered it.

These thoughts just happen—pop up,
flutter out of our unconscious like
loose confetti notes to confront us,
remind us—perhaps help us if we indulge.

I thought, “I used to sing in the shower.”
Huh, when did I stop? It was a very long
time ago. I liked singing in the shower.
It felt good! So why did I stop? I felt
a sense of loss. What changed … in me?

It was so long ago. “What songs did I sing?”
It took awhile. Then I remembered “Billy Boy.”
It was one of my favorites. My mother sang it
to me when I was a little boy. It had gathered
dust somewhere in my brain but I found it.

“Oh where have you been Billy Boy, Billy Boy,
oh where have you been, charming Billy?”

Yes, where have you been, Billy Boy?

I’ve missed you.

June 17, 2017

Until Sometime Tomorrow

Mar 232015

To sleep, to sleep
to dream dreams deep
to go where I please
with effortless ease

I’ll visit the past
where I saw you last
near the old café
at the edge of the bay.

I’ll hold and I’ll kiss you;
forget how I’ve missed you
since you were taken away
on that unspeakable day.

I’ll love you, my dear,
as though you were here
and put off my sorrow
… until sometime tomorrow.

March 23, 2015

Love Letter

Jul 312014

My Dearest ________,

I awoke filled with the knowledge of you. It was not a dream.

I stood alone on a high balcony, which overlooked a great expansive, high-pillared hall. I looked down upon a large milling crowd of elegantly dressed people. I immediately sensed your presence among them, and then … I saw you—your exquisitely lovely face, the indescribable natural grace of your movements, your pensive gaze that spoke to my heart—and something else that I cannot know or say or dream away—an ineffable eternal knowledge that we share.

I longed to be with you, to look into your eyes, hear your voice, to touch and hold you. I knew at once, profoundly, that I had always loved you and that you had always loved me.

It was not a moment in time for time ceased or was replaced by you. I knew we had been joined forever, beautifully, in a transcendent, eternal truth. I simply knew. Yet I was unable to move or speak.

Dear beautiful soul, how I love and miss you so. You are my missing piece.

You moved slowly toward the far right exit of the great hall among those I somehow knew were your friends. You did not look my way; not once. I knew you would not, could not. I knew there was a reason for our separation, a reason of great import, though I knew not what it was.

Then, inside my longing I knew we would be together again—though not how or when. Yet I knew.

My gaze widened in an attempt to understand where I was—where we were. In that brief moment time returned. As the crowd moved slowly out of the great hall I strained to see if you were still there among them, but you were not. You were gone. Had you been there, it would have been impossible to miss you, for we are joined in an intimacy beyond all earthly experience or comprehension.

This is my love letter to you, my dearest one. I cannot know why we are separated in time and space. And why I was able to cross over ever so briefly to witness our love remains a mystery. But if by the same cosmic grace that touched me, you are permitted to read these words, know that any love I have experienced here was an anemic imposter compared to ours.

For now, I can only dream of being reunited with you … forever.

Your Robert

Note: I did awake one morning with this “knowledge.” I put ‘knowledge’ in quotes because even though the experience was far more powerful—profound—than any dream I have had, I realize that there could be other explanations. Still, given how little we really know about who, what, why, and even where we are, I don’t rule out the possibility that I had in fact been in the presence of my soulmate.

July 31, 2014

Near The Garden Grows

Dec 262013

She had a garden in the back
close beside an aging shed
in which she kept a child's sled.

She talked about her early lettuce,
her carrots and sweet peas—
all thriving things that pleased.

She spoke easily about weather
and what made her garden grow
and how best to weed and hoe.

But never did she care to say
a word about the child's old sled
that hung in the weathered shed.

Til' one day an idle thought said
carelessly, brought quite clearly
a memory felt so deeply … dearly.

Unconsciously I trust, without
intent, I spoke of winter snow
and how sleighing we would go.

My words, quickly out, quicker than
what great sadness mind could know,
dire pain that near the garden grows.

Turning to me, softly, she spoke,
pruning tool in her right hand
—the saddest face in all the land.

“Tommy, barely five that day we
went to sleigh on Northwind Hill,
a day that Fate would choose to kill.

“Squealing out with joy as down he
raced on his new Christmas sled,
until he hit a tree … and he was dead.”

Before I could utter a heartfelt word,
she had reached for new seeds to sow
where she would help them grow.

December 26, 2013

We Didn’t Plant Jane

Jul 182012

We didn't plant Jane like we did
—do with all our others. We honored
her wish and burned her body into ashes.

It's one thing to know about cremation
as something others do with the leftover,
evacuated evidence of a life once lived—
surely as meaningful as mine … or yours.
It was quite another to see Jane poured out
of a small unremarkable container onto
the damp, musty, busy forest floor behind
Herbie's house where her beloved cat
was buried. She wanted to be close to
her most loyal companion. I suspect the
sentiment was mutual.

I had known her my entire life. That means
always, from before the beginning of memory
to … when? To the pouring of the ashes?
To the precise end of our last conversation?
To the official moment of her death? – when
I was not there … could not make it in time.
To the end of memory … the end of caring?
When did I stop knowing her? Have I?

Others I've loved have died. We buried them,
placed them in airtight containers and put
them in the ground in fields of memories so
we could imagine that somehow they still
existed or would have evidence that they did.
An attempt to mitigate our loss? Disguise Death?
At least there was something left, a marker,
some words chiseled onto a piece of stone
that reassured us that we had loved them,
been loved by them … and it told others.

Jane was eight years older than I, my eldest sister.
That distanced us when we were children.
As I, tentatively, met my fellow kindergartners,
Jane was entering puberty. The distance between
five and thirteen is immense. But the distance
between fifty and fifty-eight is not much at all.
Most of us have been wrenched out of childhood,
shaped and cured by the vagaries of life, by then.

We became close friends, which is a very nice
thing for brothers and sisters. But nothing is free
in this life. That's what my mother told me.
"Nothing is free, Bobby. You'll see. There is a
price for everything."

Jane told me that she had always wanted to be a
dancer. It was a childhood dream of hers. She was
in her seventies when she told me that. And she
had other dreams that never came true. All those
years and I never knew these things about my
sister.

She wasn't bitter, just accepting—perhaps
resolved. I cried a little inside for the things she
wouldn't allow herself to cry about. Jane didn't
cry easily even when she was whipped with
the Cat-Of-Nine-Tails. It was about principles.
Jane could be stubborn.

When her son, Billy, poured her ashes onto the
dark, damp ground I thought, "Is that it? Is that
all that is left of my sister? Where are her dreams,
her laughter, her sorrow? She hasn't finished yet!"
Though she said she had. "Where are the myriad
of things of a life lived? Where is the intelligence
I saw in her eyes, the knowledge unique to her?
Where is my dear sister? How can I love her now?
How can she love me?"

Wait, we don't even have a marker! But then
markers don't last forever, either.

Mother was right. Nothing is free in this life.

July 18, 2012

Dear Rose

Apr 272012

I bought an old desk.
It was antique.
Inside, a letter,
yellowed and dry,
perhaps left
for me to justify.

It said,

“Dear Rose,
I love you so.
It broke my heart
to see you go.”

That's all there was –
not one word more.
I put it back
and closed the drawer.

April 27, 2012

Ghosts

May 142007

Where have they gone?
Ghost people.
Some who said hello
and kissed me
and said “I love you.”
– and said goodbye
… or did I, or did we?
and some died or perhaps
were never really here.
Yet, they seemed as real
as you, my dear,
before the losses …
the moribund sense
of how they felt
and smelled and,
oh God yes,
how they loved,
… made love.
Before the insidious
dissipation of all that was
vital and extraordinary
and … adored,
before our hearts
began to die.

Will you become
a ghost, my dear?

May 14, 2007

His Name Should Be On the Wall

Oct 172006

I’m watching television—a Vietnam War documentary. It’s about the cruelty, the insanity of war. People weep. A wife of an American Vietnam War veteran says her husband’s name is not on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. She says it should be. She says he went into their garage one day and shot himself and left her a note that said, “I love you, sweetheart, but I can’t take the flashbacks anymore.” So his name should be on the wall, she says. I agree and I sit here and I weep.

October 17, 2006

Have You Seen Me?

Feb 212006

Have you seen me? Anywhere?
she asked.

What?

I’ve lost myself and I’m hoping
you know where I am.

Well, you’re here.
You know, right here. Now.

Not really. It’s not me.
It doesn’t feel like me. You know?

I’m sorry.

Thank you … but will that help?

Well, how did you lose yourself?

I’ve been in love …

And?

… and he left.

Oh, I see.

Yes.

So you gave yourself to him
and he took you with him
when he left? Is that it?

Apparently.

That doesn’t make sense.

Does it have to?

No, but it would help.

It would help me?

Yes.

Do what?

To get your Self back.

February 21, 2006

Your Release Awaits

Feb 062006

Unwittingly, though unerringly, she lives by her script—the coping tapes, the survival codes, the ones we write in childhood to get through each day to the next. Unchallenged, thus unrevised, her script crafts her future as predictably as we mark the movement of the stars.

In her early pubescent days—the heavy-burdened days of her young and tentative womanhood—she sought the mother love she’s never had from boys whose nature-driven bodies sought something else.

These collisions of mismatched wills and wiles, of offers and compromise—acceptance of disguised, deceptive, and fleeting fulfillment—refined and sculpted her nature and fate.

She gave the boys what they wanted. Oddly, to her, at times she enjoyed giving them what they wanted–and what they gave to her. But when they were done she was empty again. She did not feel loved.

Now, in her tightly-bound woman world, romance as she knows it abides ever so briefly to protect her from the certainty of common life, the reality of change and loss of which she is most afraid. It is tricky to manage though. It is increasingly demanding to keep reality at bay. The pain of unmet expectations in another ill-conceived, starry-eyed adventure—one more self-scripted romantic failure, is a moment of utter, bitter confirmation that she is surely unworthy of worthy love.

Yet, loyal to script, each painful encounter is new. She is caught unaware, fully surprised at this great, awful, unwanted, unearned suffering of a kind and measure so very familiar to her should she dare to give it even a passing sideways glance for an honest moment or two.

For her denial of authorship, the cost is high. Unremitting tears well up from deep reservoirs of longing where love so desperately wants to be.

Oh, dear woman, your release awaits you on the other side of your sorrow, should you choose to love yourself … at last.

February 6, 2006

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