Those Tears Are For You

Special Contribution 

This is a first-time event for me. I am going to post a short essay and 2 poems that my sister wrote for a writers’ group to which she belongs. She is involved in writing as a way to organize her memories and “the feelings that they brought “.

I totally understand that.

Please take a few minutes and read this essay. Please share your reactions.

Many thanks to you all.

***

The day of my father’s funeral service marks one of the saddest days of my life. The service took place outside. We gathered on my brother Jeff’s front yard. My father’s urn was placed in the center of a table that was covered with a white, linen cloth. We were surrounded by woods, fields, livestock, and a beautiful open sky in bright sunshine. This provided the perfect place for remembrance of John, my father. His love of nature and family had run deep within him.

I sat close to my mother, Charlotte, who felt deep physical and emotional pain. I wrapped my arms around her as we listened to the voice of Father Jim perform the ritual for the funeral service for John. For the fifteen years we lived in Charlottesville, Father Jim had been our priest and a close friend of the family. Over the years he had performed the weddings for me and my two brothers. And now he had flown to upstate New York for my father’s funeral.

I remember going with my mother into Jeff’s house to rest after the service. We stretched out on the sofa; her feet by my head, mine by hers. As we lay there I felt transported in time to when it had just been my father, my mother and me. I did not want this feeling of unity with my father, who was gone, and my mother, who was going, to end.

Very late into the night, I remember riding down dark country roads on the way back to the motel. Father Jim drove and my friend, Laura, sat in the front. I cried alone, in the back seat, for the two hour trip through that dark night. The next day Laura and I drove back to Pennsylvania.

My mother died two weeks later. I know that my father sat by her side, telling her that it was okay to cross over, every single day until she did.

As a child and young person, I remember my father telling me not to cry when he was gone. I recently wrote this for John.

***

No Tears

Many, many times 

You said, ‘no tears.’

‘Those tears are for you

Not me.  Don’t cry.

I will be in a better place’.

Daddy, I miss you

And yes I cry for me

And the early morning walks

We will never take again or

Going through the fields to pick raspberries

In the early morning dew.

And this is the one that I wrote for my mother, Charlotte.

A Bit Fey

You told me

‘Your mother always

Was a bit fey.’

My brother told me that

You were in love with her.

Is that why you were

At our house

Most days

Father Jim?

She was lovable.

Intelligent, witty

And beautiful and

Yes, other worldly

A bit fey.