A Fateful Day

“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”

― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Next week is the 13th October, when in 2009, my heart was broken when my dear Annie died.  This Saturday poem looks back to that time, when everything changed and broke apart. I've been told that if death comes after a long time, when someone slips away with dementia, it can be a blessing, but I have no experience of that. Mine was brutal and swift, and for the most part completely unexpected. We had seen each other the weekend before, we had talked on the phone on the evening, we had sent texts before bedtime. This was not going gently into that good night: it was the strike of lightening, the tree suddenly falling over and uprooting, swift and traumatic.

A Fateful Day

Oh, I remember still that terrible, fateful day:
Unexpected phone call, when Giles did say
That Annie is dead. And yet the last night,
We chatted on the phone, all seemed right;
And now my world came crashing down:
A feeling of pain, that I would surely drown;
I made apologies, left the client, driving in,
Stunned, shocked, already the tears begin;
I saw you, in the hospital, on that bed,
So still, so white, unmoving, so surely dead;
Tears began to pour, sobbing without end:
My soul-mate, my dear beloved, my friend;
Your skin, so cold to farewell kiss, no life:
These moments still cut deep like a knife;
They heal, but the scars still remain there
Buried, and yet at an instant I am aware,
And none more so than at this time of year,
Approaching anniversary: it comes so near;
But I also remember you alive, so full of fun,
And joy and laughter; memories one by one
Return, the drizzle and foggy day we first met,
Coming out of Big Vern into the damp and wet;
And more meetings, conversations, and walks,
Through the lane meandering with our talks;
And our first kiss: sweet moment of change:
That it is past, and gone now, seems so strange,
Because you were so full of the zest of life,
Even as your heart began to fail, that strife,
Against limitation; and I loved you the more:
Perhaps I knew deep down the opening door
Through which the traveller goes, of no return;
But how our passion lit up, at each new turn,
Until that one day: you were gone from me;
Failing heart and limitations gone: set free,
Flying upon the wind, soaring up like a star;
And perhaps, then, to look down from afar,
And bless those who mourn, those who weep,
And those whose memory still alive they keep;
And every year, I light a candle, and remember:
Not the burning pyre, or the glowing after ember,
But time alive: that past which memory brings;
Know you are not weary, but rise up on eagle wings.

Without love, there would be no pain: that's the cost:

And all things pass, but nothing good is truly lost.