Feel the warmth of sun,love, and laughter.
Coffee hot, milk from the local dairy.
Toodle through the woods with the pups. Tis the season for them to disappear into great mounds of leaves only to pop out and galavanting onward.(Little dogs, one blends into the scenery a bit too well!)
Snuggle in with a book – after finishing some work. And yes, so grateful that it’s work that is mostly fun for me.
Maybe a fire later.
The other 364 celebrated.
It could’ve been just hours ago. Sitting vigil, waiting with you so you need not die alone. Your time.
The brother and I wished you peace.
That little girl who lost her daddy so many years ago, she leaned in whispering wishes of joy wherever you travel.
Now? Struggling. Striving. And sometimes surrendering – to the anger, mistrust, loneliness, hurt, and sorrow. Self-reflection painful and disheartening: your child most certainly.
I want to be free of the fears infecting these scars. No thank you, I do not want to “sit with” the pain. It has been fifty years of never being enough. No, I can’t take care of my mother and brother I like you made me promise decades ago. Can’t repair their roads, or mine, though have tried. They neither seek nor heed my counsel. My value appears to exist only in usefulness to their needs. A painful, oft silenced truth. Always the pragmatic clan.
Here. Never enough, never worthy. Lesson learned: unconditional love is not.
Two years, it could’ve been tonight.
Creekside Whispers 