Friday, June 19, 2009

I don't want....

This week has not been particularly pleasant. It’s probably the second worst week of my life. Anticipation is a real killer. I should be helping to join two people in marriage and instead I am helping to take one apart. How fickle is that?

I have been sitting here for days…. weeks…. months trying to convince myself that saying “Mary is standing right beside me” or “Mary is watching over me” or “Mary would have done this” or any of the other ways you can say it, will get me through all the heart ache. But it hasn’t. I don’t know if it will.

Their wedding was to take place in a similar locale as her celebration party; outside under the trees in a forest area, a stream in the background, with a tent, tables, and chairs. Not many cut flowers, just natural greenery and wild flowers. We were trying to find cabins for the out of towners coming. Mary had finally settled on Melissa as the photographer and we were working on the menu. She had such fun at her friends wedding last year when many of the guests brought all the food. Danny was going to marry them (she was working on the internet licensing details). Mary wanted the least cost and the most fun in the outdoors. And that’s what ticks me off the most. Her Celebration of Life Party was put together in the exact manner she had wanted her wedding to be. Everyone coming together to help, bringing things, telling stories, celebrating….. It was just celebrating for the WRONG reason.

I almost wish that man had been sitting there in the middle of it all seeing all the pain and hurt, destruction of lives, futures, but that day was not about vengeance. It was about Mary. My Mary. Our Mary. The love of Tony’s life.

I don’t know what we are going to do this weekend. I’m sure Mary’s fairly pissed off that she’s not having a wedding party. I figure she’ll be fighting mad for sometime to come. I would be. Actually, I am. I feel the same way I felt the first time I started writing. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.




I don’t want....


I don’t want to have to change my life and I don’t want to “work it out”
I don’t want to live on memories or dine on pictures or sleep hoping you will be in my dreams

I don’t want to store your things in a chest sprinkled with moth balls
I don’t want to have to remind people who you are or tell them that you died

I don’t want to look into a future without your smile greeting me
I don’t want to dial your phone number and have someone else answer

I don’t want to always cry driving to work and back every day
I don’t want to have to force myself to eat or watch TV or laugh

I don’t want to talk to lawyers about “the case” or BAC or wrongful death
I don’t want to see the pain in the eyes of those who love you

I don’t want to leave the house always stuffing tissues in my pockets
I don’t want to know that you will always only be 28 years old

I don’t want to spend your wedding day knowing your dress is in the attic
I don’t want to talk about you using past tense verbs and adjectives

I don’t want to see your sewing machine sitting in a corner collecting dust
I don’t want to read the cards and letters you saved from days gone by

I don’t want to have to wear sunglasses when I’m grocery shopping
I don’t want to hear that while your door has closed someone else’s has opened

I don’t want to wonder what would have happened “if...”
I don’t want the world to go on without you

I do want to turn back the hands of time and change fate ever so slightly

2 comments:

  1. Oh, Rose, I don't know what to say. Your poem is speaking for everyone who has lost a precious child. I don't even know how you make it from day to day. All I can say is I love you. Mary will forever remain in our memories and heart as long as you keep writing. It has to be so exhausting, but yet you are still writing and spreading Mary's love and life to everyone.

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  2. You do have an amazing way of putting your feelings into words. And I know the amazing words you write only touch on the depth of what you feel. I love you! My tears are mixed with yours...

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