Monday Musings: A Child's Lament (over losing her father)
I am back with another musing for Monday. This week I want to discuss my poem A Child's Lament (over losing her father). As you may have guessed from the title of the poem, it is about my father who passed away two years ago now. He wasn't the greatest man I ever knew, he certainly had his flaws, but he was my dad and I loved him very much.
A Child's Lament portrays my deep shock and sorrow at the event. It was the day after he passed away and I hadn't slept much the night before, but as soon as I woke up I grabbed a pen and pad and wrote this poem in about five minutes. The words just came to me; I just let my sorrow and pain pour out of my heart (as I often do with my poetry) and the right words just came to me.
My dad also suffered with chronic illness, he had Crohn's disease. I didn't realize until recently how much he must have gone through as an adult living with a chronic illness. Up until recently I had been on "child" mode where I still felt like I was that scared fifteen year old girl from my past. Recently I have truly felt the weight of what it's like to be a chronically ill adult, to try your absolute hardest to make life work, to want to be a productive member of society, to want to find someone to share your life with, and having your illness follow you and step in front of all the opportunities that others can easily reach out and grab. Depression hit me hard lately, I felt (feel) like life was (is) never going to work out for me and I know that this is something that my dad suffered with daily as well. I never truly understood that weight when my dad was alive, so I never truly understood what he was going through and that makes me very sad. Thinking about him now I am sad that I can't have him here with me to talk to and learn how he got through it day-in and day-out.
A Child's Lament is a small tribute to my dad's life. He was a very kind and gentle man and was truly empathetic towards everyone (this is something I get from him too) so even though my sorrow soaked into that poem I wanted it to end in a way that portrays what my dad would want for me and my brothers. really what he would want for everyone. He would want us to keep trying, to look for happiness in the simple things in life. He would want us to not just look at the world around us, but to see all the beauty that it has to offer. I miss my dad very much and on my hardest days I imagine I hear his voice in the wind whispering "it's okay, you are not alone."
I hope you enjoyed reading this, come back next week to learn about my poem Mourning Morning Dove, and as always head on over to www.amazon.com to purchase my book The Bright Side of Dark: Collected Poems.
