Writing | Poem
Recently I have been remembering a poem I wrote, upon losing my mother to cancer in 2020. Our story is a unique one. Our mom has two daughters, who both adored her very much, and were both living on the other side of a closed border during the pandemic. My sister and I refer to our grief as "complicated." Without the chance to help our parents, being barred from that one last hug or the chance to say our goodbyes, the process has come in fits and starts, and has taken a lot longer to move through the healthy stages of grief. During one such swell of awareness, the pain of losing her was nearly overwhelming. So I wrote. Some people drink, I suppose, but I write. I pray, I cry, I remember, and I write. Though it hurts, I would do nothing to deaden the pain -- for it cries aloud, telling of my love for the woman who gave me life, and who nurtured me through every stage from birth to marriage to motherhood to ministry and beyond. Until one day she couldn't. She...