Significant Loss

They say that any Significant Loss
changes you.
For the rest of your life
you figure out who you are Now.
Twelves years later,
the anniversary of the funeral,
I'd do things differently.
The service, for one thing. 
The man who read my words would
play no part at all.  And
I'd stand my ground beside
the final resting place - fancy word
for hole - until the last bit of dirt
had settled. Men in suits with fancy cars
would not coerce me into leaving 
one second before I chose. The people
eating casseroles waiting for The Family
could wait. Adam was there. 
His body, anyway.
I loved it, too.
The woman who pulled me aside,
hand warm on my icy arm, said
she'd always Be There for me.
I'd stop the lie before it could escape
her lips. "Live your life," I'd say. 
"Hug your kids. Remember us in prayer, 
if we come to mind, but make no promises
you will not keep. Make no
promises at all, in fact. You don't
know what tomorrow brings. 
You don't know how you will change."
Or maybe I'd let her talk, after all.
Not one word in twelve years,
but surely she meant it at the time.
That should count for something.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2012

So much could be said about the day of Adam's funeral. Too much for one poem, or a year of poems. I settled this week into a holding pattern, like a storm that moves in and then drenches the ground for days. Eventually it stops, things dry, the sun returns.