A stack of shirts, long unworn, wrinkled.
Shorts, a little short and revealing for someone my age.
The necklace from Aunt Libby’s cruise in 1995.
And then, at the bottom. the forgotten cards and letters.
I’ll admit, I don’t remember the act of writing them,
or receiving the occasional ones that I received from him.
I remember the feeling of incredible new love,
I remember the affection , unsolicited and so long ago.
But it has been so long since those days, those moments-
little kids, fussing, playing out side on warm summer nights.
Their fussing ending quickly when lightning bugs came out.
Life, as I dreamed it, had been almost real- for a while.
Now, I read my words and remember them so clearly,
both the days when the words flowed truly from my heart
and those when I swallowed hard, and tried to remember
as I wrote those same letters, lying, with tears on my cheeks.
Now, I carry the pain of loosing a beautiful teen so wrongly.
Feeling that God betrayed me when I did everything I could.
I lost my health, my faith and the deep bond with my family,
When my health was destroyed by the horrible death of my son.
The destruction had gone on for years, slowly, before that day.
Now, I was filled with misery and they were young adults.
College, marrying new houses, kids-and my one still small child.
He gave me life, saved my soul, but I had to let him grow up too.
The letters and journals became ways to cope for me
Often pretending, other times literary screams of pain.
The older kids were at heir house, I was at mine.
I was living in a house that used to be a home.
Mixed in with black nightgowns and alluring bathing suits,
there were only scribbled notes, half apology, half excuse.
That’s all I got. I no longer wrote such letters at all.
My journals, tear-stained, of my ruined life replaced them.
Affection was gone, grand children became my solace, my life.
I felt like a stranger to my family-I have never felt so alone.
Now letters from past generations haunt me now. My parents died,
never intending me to read them, as an only child I had to.
I saw myself in my mom. Her struggles, her pain as she aged.
A million more tears and less understanding of my haunted past.
There, at my childhood home, I again shuffled thru the memories.
Finding unbearable pain in cleaning out the drawers, and the wars once again.
beebeesworld 