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LOSS (Widower)

Rattling blades revolve to silence
On the unfinished lawn
I look up to see inside the kitchen window
You're not there

The sob sucks the life out of me
From the deepest pit
Swelling, uncontrolled, unbidden
To choke me as I scream silently
For breath and release

I glance in hope to your window
My eye lids fall
As the sob shatters my solitude
You're still, not there

------------------------------------------------

The grass now flat and long and three years unkempt
Hides un-grown flowers before your unseen smile, at 1:00pm
No tea, no lunch to call me in
My labours now spent indoors,
In silence

Outside, a single blackbird sings to me
And only me
He sang to me yesterday
Will he be gone so soon
Will he return to torment me
With his notes of beauty

Loss, the space within me
Decreases oh so slowly...
This space was your room
Where I visit you unannounced
Welcomed by my memories

The cheer of friends lifts a leaden Cross,
Too heavy to bare when they are gone.
Embarrassed strangers slip sideways passed me
“A man we saw crying at the checkout till.”

Looking down's, become my days' perspective
Looking through your window, my wall
This memory's strongest
But you're not here
And I'm not there
Our garden's beneath a Pall

1:00pm was my 'Happy hour,'
In the days I loved with you
“Time for tea and sandwiches?”
“Yes please, I'd love a brew.”
Adjourn the mowing and take my ease

Do I manage, do I cope
Mostly I muddle through
These three long years
Have been as six
Following lists 'to do'

For months I shrank inside my shells
Of carapace and bricks
Too terrified to live again
Too low to take life's kicks

I am not whole
I never was
My soul it dwelt with thee
Being taken by a living stream
Of dreams it's you I see.

You are more to me than life
You are Loss.

Hi Byron ~

This is so impacting in its strong details that I can hear it in the real-life voice of someone engulfed in grief. It's VERY effective.


~ Lizzy

I believe that widowers find life after Loss to be a real minefield. Widows will have been the stalwart of family life, emotional, economic, practical and unselfishly. Widowers will have done what men have been expected to do for thousands of generations. Finding that taking care of themselves is not easy, means they have to adapt or sink. Together with their suffering they are out of their depth. This is a grossly, sweeping generalisation, but I feel that there is a grain of Truth in it.
Many widowers will manage, to some extent.
Coping with Loss; coping with total life-changing parameters; coping with the 'black dog,' will all impact horribly on a widower. The same is true of widows. However, while I make no excuses for this personal viewpoint, I would welcome any constructive views on it.
This is not a sexist viewpoint. I've tried to be as objective as possible, while putting the feelings into the 'prose.' How does a 'man' feel? How do his friends feel? How do strangers react when they see a 'man' crying uncontrollably, in public?
I wanted to express the rivers of emotions which would flow through all of us, given that we could be in any of the above groups.
I hope I managed it.

You have artfully touched the core...your feelings are exprressed transparently and easily touch any reader, widower or not!

I will look for more of your work.

leonard from Montreal

Thanks leonardmtl.

I was struggling earlier on to catch the correct phrase to illuminate what a widower endures. Serendipity struck shortly afterwards while we were watching a TV Drama...

Widowers feel the all engulfing 'crashing of the waves.' Stranded on a beach; pounded remorselessly; dragged out to sea; swamped in an elemental hell. In a partnership, those of us who 'go' first will avoid this anguish.

However, which of us has love enough to endure it all, if we were given the choice, and chose to be the one who is left to live, knowing that one's Love and Loss would be unbearable for the rest of one's life?

Greater love is to take the pain of 'Loss'.

Greater pain is to embrace the Loss of the loved.

This somewhat turns on its head the view that the greatest love is to lay down your life for your friends.

But these are two separate forms of Love.

Friends and soul mates are emotionally measured in a way that is similar to comparing apples and oranges.