The Knotted Family Ties

The trauma that engulfs a family when a sibling transits this world leaves unbelievable tears in a family fabric.  Everything surrounding, every event takes on a meaning whose depth only the individuals directly affected can hope they withstand.  They must master this poignant injury if they are one day to emerge whole.   There are no words in this world’s dictionaries to adequately  describe this pain.  Not when for all their lives when one sneezed the others whipped out the tissues and in one voice murmured their God Bless.  No matter what part of the world they were in.   It is a trauma of great magnitude and it is scar tissue, a keloid on their lives until they reunite.

The Knotted Family Ties

A haze surrounds me
and I sleepwalk.
I run to stem the panic
which offends the sanity of my loves
and know I cannot do it.  I retreat.

They tell me they are sick at heart
and then my heart sickens.
The sadness in their eyes
robs them of abundant life.
Their unhappiness unbridles mine
and I am immobile.

I leave them all to heaven.
I cannot be the eyes of him
who will not see.
I whimper in my sleep.
They do what they do and cannot do other.

My own heart tells me I have  taken
a quantum leap and am dismayed
that they cannot follow.
I want to speak but none there are
who speak my language.

I am a foreigner on my own hearth
and the fire in me cannot warm an Other.
They cannot feel it.
My fire would burn them and
turn to ashes what flames them now.
There is no other direction except straight through.
There is no sleep and I tire.

My thirst could not be satiated
by a half glass of water.
If a sip would have been enough
the glass would have been half full.
A full glass would not have been enough
so great my thirst.

I close the shutters and pull up the steps.
I learn to live in my own house.
I stay my time and do what is mine.

Jesus, it hurts to watch and be able to do nothing.