I wrote this poem back in 2014 when a friend asked me to write a poem for Mother's Day to honor all the mothers who had lost a child.
At the time, I did the best I could to empathize and try and sit in that space and imagine the grief, confusion, and extreme sense of love and loss a mother might feel. Then in 2016, I lost my brother, and I was so entrenched in not only my own grief, but the collective grief of my parent's, that I knew much more acutely how that experience may feel.
I tried to share these words last year, but I couldn't bring myself to do so. They hit too close, too real, too raw, too soon. In the words, I had captured all too well the emotional experiences of pain and ache and rage and sad and the chaos that occurs when love gets turned inside out into grief.
But this year, with a little more time gone by, I share them to honor those who have known loss, who have bravely found a way to keep on going after life has gone still- may you continue to find the light to keep moving forward. I share them to acknowledge that Mother's Day, for many reasons, is not an easy day for some- may you find comfort and solace on this day. And I especially share them for my mother and all the mother's our there who have lost a child- I am putting my hand over my heart and sending love to you as I write these words- may you keep finding healing in your grief and the love you need to see you through.
The Space
Between
by BethAnne Kapansky Wright
She knows what it is to
feel
pink, the kind that
softly covers
everything with love
when she
stares into the pool of
her
child's eyes.
She knows what it is to
feel
black, the kind that
leaves your
grief-struck belly void.
Hollow
with ache that will
never be filled.
What she doesn't know is
how to feel the space
between.
How to hold her coal
slashed grief
and rose of love in the
same space,
forcing them into
coexistence,
as she tries to wrap her
arms
around life's reality
that one minute
her child was there, and
then they
were not.
She knows what it is to
feel
red. She finds the same
fiery fervor
that had her vowing to
protect
at any cost when she
looked
at her sweet one the
very first time,
has now turned to fury
at the sky above
as she asks the question
to which
there is no answer:
Why?
She knows what it is to
feel
blue, the kind that
covers her
with sorrowful waves as
her dark
ocean becomes her
drowning
abyss. She can't stop
the sinking.
What she doesn't know is
how to feel the space
between.
How to hold the crimson
stain
of rage and undertow of
tired
sapphire tears in the
same space,
forcing them into
coexistence,
as she tries to wrap her
arms
around a terrible
timeline that
makes no sense.
She knows what it is to
feel
ash. Pewter rivulets of
mascara
run down her sunken
cheeks,
because she sees an
unexpected
reminder. An hour later,
lashes now
bare, she realizes she
has lost yet
another day to the deep.
She knows what it is to
feel
yellow. The hope that
springs
from the persistent
dandelion
growing through the
cracks,
reminding her life
continues
and will always find a
way,
no matter how cemented
we
feel our hearts have
become.
What she doesn't know is
how to feel the space
between.
How to hold the listless
truth of gray
and resilience of
marigold's grace
in the same space,
forcing them
into coexistence, as she
tries
to wrap her arms around
what
it looks like to keep
going.
She knows what it is to
feel
dark. Like midnight in
winter
where the sky is pitched
onyx,
a raven-whispered bearer
of
starless news.
She knows what it is to
feel
bright. The luminescent
kind
that sweeps away the
black,
if only for a moment. An
infinitesimal second of
hope
reminding her light is
still
possible.
What she doesn't know is
how to feel the space
between.
How to hold the dark
night of soul
against the bright light
of her heart,
forcing them into
coexistence, as
she tries to wrap her
arms around how
any one person can hold
such pain.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross
once said
of grief:
"People are like
stained-glass
windows. They sparkle
and shine
when the sun is out, but
when the
darkness sets in, their
true beauty
is revealed only if
there is a light
from within."
She knows what it is to feel
that window. Her
clashing hues
weave in and out of
stain-glass days.
She feels her sweet one
everywhere
she goes.
She begins to realize
the love
she has is always there-
carried inside.
Her enduring love
becomes
light's harbinger of
grace in her
stain-glass heart.
She learns what it is to
feel gold.
The eternal kind that
reminds us
Love is greater than
death and
lives on long after our
stain-glass
lives.
The kind that is ever
present
when one has loved to
the deep
and back. Shining beauty
through
the windows of our
stain-glass souls.
Teaching us how to fill
the space between.
BethAnne Kapansky Wright: I am a Clinical Psychologist who enjoys writing, illustrating and creating. I specialize in dealing with women's issues, life transitions, trauma, grief work, and finding healing in our relationships, especially our relationship with our self. I am a big believer in authenticity, intuition, the power of love, finding laughter and joy, and learning to be more fully human. My essays and poetry have been published in a variety of publications, and I am the author of the poetry books Cranberry Dusk, Freebird Fridays (November 2016, Golden Dragonfly Press) and Lamentations of the Sea: 111 passages on grief, love, loss and letting go. I currently lives in Anchorage, Alaska with my soul mate and our fur kids and my beloved mountains and trails. I can be found on Facebook or on my blog: Sunshine in Winter, here.
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