I often feel like I see her, like there is some sign that she’s there, that she’s okay, that she’s happy. I’m not sure why I see that so often in the sky – in the vivid colors of the sunset, in the sunbeams that break through the clouds, in that full moon as it was rising last night through the large windows of my class, and then later as I watched it through my windshield on the drive home. Maybe I’m always looking now, and that’s why I see them. Maybe I see them because I want to know that she’s there.
Other times I’m reminded that she’s not here. This is one of those days. I cannot go back in time and change anything to make the outcome different, to fix this hole in her family, in our family, where she just simply isn’t there.
I had tears today for all of your family today, and especially for her mom and dad and sister. Little girls with enormous smiles shouldn’t just disappear from family photos. It shouldn’t be possible. I know how much you all must miss her. xo
Brooke recently posted…Family Photos
Brooke is completely right. It’s not fair, and it is so, so wrong. The world keeps spinning, but never as brightly. I know you’re holding your girls extra tight during this season… I’ll be praying that y’all find yourself pulled to moments of peace and joyful memories of her. She is such a gift.
The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat
waits on the sidewalk outside
my window.The flower in her hair
is wet. She stands very still
her eyes focuses upward on some
object I cannot see. She does not
move,but she smiles. . . slightly.
Perhaps she plays the cello
and she is humming Bartok silently
making the bow ripple with her tongue
against her teeth. Or, maybe, she waits
for a bus to take her to her lover.
Or she has read a letter from Paris
or Istanbul and she smells coffee
and chestnuts steam roasted and she
hears in the cobbled streets the cries
of vendors under the aged curves
of bridges. Perhaps she is just a girl
standing in the rain by a stone bench
in the early morning while the
street shines. It is nothing-you argue.
Then why do I weep, and why are there
splinters in my palms, and why do I
stand here, long, long, after she is
gone?
-Anthony S. Abbott