This is a piece I thought I'd shared long ago. It has been revised and revamped as time has moved on and I can look back with a different perspective. Grieving is personal and no one can or should tell you how or when or where... and sometimes you really do figure it out...)

Widows' Weeds


She never wore the garb of mourning,
The widows' weeds of broken dreams.
Nor did wreaths of bereavement
Hang upon her door ... words of sympathy
Gave way to ordinary days long ago
Much like Easter finery giving way
To comfort after church.

Life demanded her attention so she donned
Time's apron, collectiing moments
In lined pockets, ignoring the tattered
Hemlines and frayed seams.
But the silence of lowered curtains heard
Her weeping, felt her vulnerability ...
And she mourned.

He had left her in springtime,
Amid the lilies of Easter and garden vines,
Tiptoeing away when she wasn't looking,
No whispered good-byes to mark the moment,
Only emptiness reaching into happiness
And she felt naked in the loss.
Springtime died that day
And the lilies of Easter wept their ivory tears.

Still she wore no widows' weeds,
No somber-draped reminder decorated her door
And sympathetic words offered no solace ...
Time had moved on, paying little notice
To her quiet sadness, for it had things to do,
People to see and more aprons to fill with memories.

But she and the silence remembered
... he had left her in springtime.



© 2005
Rev. 2006-2007