Showing posts with label GRIEF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GRIEF. Show all posts

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Quote of the Day for 2016-09-29


"The grief that does not speak, Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break."

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) Macbeth, act 4, scene 3 (1606)

Paul McCartney leaving the AIR Oxford Street studio shortly after the murder of John Lennon (December 9, 1980) Photograph by Paul Fievez
Paul McCartney leaving the AIR Oxford Street studio shortly after the murder of John Lennon (December 9, 1980) Photograph by Paul Fievez

Sunday, September 23, 2012

A Will

Mom and her older sister, 1937.

The conference room was ample
The lawyer droned on and on
The aide made endless copies
Which the accountants set upon.

We came to meet the men
Who bill by the hour
Who passed out streams of paper
And looked entirely too dour.

The will was probated months ago
The taxes were yet to be paid
The extensions were filed in triplicate
The piles of folders needed a spade.

Endless questions for these priests
Who control the language of our lives
Who scribble out the sacrifices
That are demanded by our gods.

These are the chores of the living
The ones who are left to grieve
All of us must persevere
Or so we all believe

She was more to me than parchment
More than life insurance and deeds
But the entirety of her financial life was
Spelled out on this pile of leaves.

I felt her last in her empty bedroom
Bereft of any evidence of her life
She must have been that spirit
That touched me in my heart.

My cousin and I shed tears that day
Remembering her endearing charms
But today she did not visit us
In that wainscot paneled room.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

The Tears Won't Come

Morning Tears by Paul Binnie

The tears are not coming.
They have sent their regrets.
The weeping is on hiatus.
And yet I am so upset.

My sadness will not abate
Without an emotional release
But the S.N.R.I. I'm taking
Makes it hard to attain that peace

I used to cry quite often,
Others must have thought me weak,
But I regarded it as a blessing;
A badge of sorrow flowing down my cheek.

This day we celebrate mothers.
They who nursed us with great care.
Who praised and nagged and fed us
And told us what to wear.

The metastasized foreign colonies
Flourished under small domes.
Like little stationary marbles,
Up and down her arms.

My mother was so afraid
Of dying in great pain;
We spoke of it so often that
It's seared into my brain.

It was a kind of blessing
Among all the emotional boil
That the anesthesia induced dementia
Unraveled her mortal coil.

I really have to concentrate
As method actors do
To darken my mind even further
And bring the tears to fore.

But even if I succeed
In satiating this grief.
I know it'll be back again,
Bundled into sheaves.