Jamie's Birthday

He would have turned 41 years old today.  It doesn't seem possible that so much time has gone by since that bright, sunny, cold January day when he decided to make his grand entrance into this world.  It doesn't seem possible that he's been gone almost two years.


Sorrow Puts On Her Blue Dress

He has set me in dark places -- Lamentations 3:1

It's spring again, a sky of forget-me-not blue.
The light itself is a flower, the grass so sharp and new
you might cut yourself if you fell.  And this is hell.
To go on living after the death of a child.
You have to get up each morning,
make coffee, pretend to go about your work.
Try to eat some cereal, get it past the lump,
as if you had swallowed an egg,
whole, like a black snake.
Now the earth reinvents itself, draws up
from the roots. Even plain brown twigs break
into blossoms of heliotrope and cream.  Flashy tulips
spring from the dirt, yellow and red.
You see only their black hearts.
One day, you may learn to love
the world again and all its breakable beauty.
But now, as the sun pours out, golden as honey,
your heart constricts to a fist of ice.
And it is always winter.

~ Barbara Crooker