I don’t cry every day anymore, so that must be progress.
There was a time when your name could undo me before the sun had fully risen.
A time when every phone notification made my heart stumble, when every unfamiliar vehicle turning into the driveway made me look twice.
That doesn’t happen as often now.
Not because I miss you less.
But because a heart can only break in the exact same place so many times before it learns how to carry the crack.
It has been so long since I’ve heard your voice.
So long since I’ve felt your hug, seen your smile, or smelled the sunshine in your hair and the scent of an honest day’s work lingering in your clothes. Time has not erased those things.
If anything, it has sharpened them.
Your children are all another year older now.
So am I. So is everyone and everything.
Birthdays have come and gone. Holidays have arrived and passed. Seasons have changed without asking anyone’s permission.
Time kept moving.
I hated that at first.
It felt disloyal to laugh. Disloyal to enjoy a meal. Disloyal to have a good day when there was still so many empty places at the table.
But life is stubborn.
It insists on continuing.
I see your wife from time to time on social media. Her smile is still the one I remember from porch conversations and crowded kitchens. I see traces of the life that once intertwined so naturally with ours, and I wonder if she ever thinks about those days too.
The children are growing.
The family is changing.
The world keeps turning.
And I am learning that standing still will not bring you back into my life —our life.
I spent a long time living inside that stormy summer evening, replaying words, replaying mistakes, replaying every crossroads where things might have gone differently.
I searched for answers in places where answers no longer lived.
Grief is a hungry thing.
If you feed it, it begins to consume everything in its path and everyone around it.
I can’t let that happen.
Not anymore.
There are people here who still need me. Still need my strength. Still need my presence.
Still need me to be ok.
I need them to be okay. I need you to be okay.
So I will not lock myself away in regret and what if and so much sorrow.
I will not ask the rest of the family to live in the shadow of my heartbreak.
I will love. I will celebrate birthdays. I will make memories. I will laugh when something is funny. I will heal. I will forgive.
And so will you.
I will cry when I must.
And when thoughts of you come—and they always do—I will let them sit beside me for a while.
Not as an open wound.
Not as a punishment.
But as happiness … as love. And I’ll smile.
Because despite everything, that is what this has always been.
Love with nowhere to go.
Love that cannot call. Love that cannot visit. Love that cannot hold its grandchildren.
Love that waits.
And though I no longer stand at the window or watching the road every day, some part of my heart still leaves the porch light on.
The thought of losing a child cripples me [emotionally]. Although I have thankfully not lost a child to war my mama heart hurts so deeply for those who have that is how this poem was born so many years ago.
That is why I share it here today.
But let me not forget – let none of us forget.
Memorial Day is more than a long weekend, a parade, or a flag waving in the warm breeze. For many families, it is a chair left empty. A voice that no longer answers. A folded flag resting where a son, daughter, husband, wife, father, or mother once stood.
Today, we remember those who took an oath beneath a flag of pride and came home draped beneath it.
This poem was written years ago, but like grief itself, its meaning never ages. It is for the mothers who still whisper lullabies into silence, for the families who carry pride and heartbreak in the same breath — the same trembling hands. And for every fallen service member who gave all they had —whose absence still echoes through the lives they left behind.
Little Man By Janna Hill
IT’S TIME TO GO TO bed little man Cover up your head little man I’ll see you when the sun breaks in the morn Say your prayers and close your eyes I’ve locked the monsters all outside She’d sang those words to him since he was born
He grew to be a brave young lad And followed after his ole dad Beneath a flag of pride his oath was sworn They brought him home in silk lined wood And all around him soldiers stood While Butterfield’s Lullaby played upon the horn
It’s time to go ahead little man I know that you weren’t scared little man My heart breaks I can’t see you and I mourn I’ve said my prayers for your closed eyes I’ve tucked my feelings deep inside She sang into a folded flag of thorns.
I took this photo last night. It’s not the best photo of a starry sky but not too shabby for an iPhone either.
Well we mixed things up a little bit this year. We are skipping Christmas celebrations entirely and roadtripping instead.
There are a few that will miss having the traditional country Christmas at the Hill house and I regret that. But, our friend/family unit is large so I know they will still have a happy Christmas; at least I pray they do.
As for myself I need this for a number of reasons. I think it will be good for the hubby too.
You know it is not healthy to stew in your own miseries. God did not intend for us to be unhappy but… somehow we find misery. Misery might not even have us on her radar but we’ll jump up, waving like a fool yelling, “Yo, misery, here I am. You forgot about me.” Yep, we are a sottish lot!
So now, my spirit and my flesh feel distressed along the hatefulness of winter approaching…. I don’t love it. It worsens the feeling of despair.
The harshness. The coldness. The dying of everything around me…
Misery and Winter are soul sisters and all I have to say to either of them is, “I do not love you. Either of you! So f*<k off!!”
Sooo, instead of stewing in all the woes I cannot fix I talked to God, said my prayers and then… I said fuck it.
I know that word offends some people- it use to offend me too. Now…
I say it a lot. Fuck it.
Thank God my mother cannot hear me.
Ahhh. With all of that out of the way let me share a bit of poetry that has become a tradition for the winter solstice.
Torn from the pages of GettingMe Back (The Voices Within) my poetic biography in a senseTher latest cover
Keep an eye out for misery and do not invite her in. Guard your hearts, keep them warm my friends. Brighter days await.
She would be 66 years old today. Instead, she is frozen in time at 17 and I ….
I sit with what I have left of her – a lot of cherished memories, a handful of photographs, her purse, her wallet, her 45 records and her old scrap book.
Our formative years shape our perspective and the culmination of our experiences spark the creative juices.
Sometimes the juices they spark are as sweet as honey and nectar … or as tart as a key lime … as sour as a pickle … but sometimes they are bitter.
So so bitter.
May usually has a very positive influence on my mood despite being the anniversary month of the death of my older sister 48 years ago and my mother eleven years ago.
I think May has got me in my feels. A little too much I might add because my emotions are running the gamut friends!! Not in a creative kind of way either.
I just miss them. I miss my mother.
And.
And I find myself rehashing the days that sparked a few of my creative juices.
Today I was going over that stormy day eleven years ago- the day that inspired the following poem.
The Last
The last bit of sorrow swelling
from closed eyes…
sitting as if waiting…
near the temple at the outer corner…
The storm outside was magnificent!
Sheets of rain surrounded us like walls of glass, but we broke through at 90 miles per hour.
Rolling thunder rattled the windows, as if mumbling words
only we could understand.
Brilliant shocks of light
from every direction lighted the way;
each dazzling strike followed by ostentatious paternal claps that said, Enough! Take my hand – hurry!
The thick charcoal sky parted in bilious shades of gray like the Red Sea…
And I saw…
The last moment –
the last millisecond
the last breath.
The last bit of sorrow
and pain
and worry.
The last tear sitting –
as if waiting
near the temple
at the outer corner of her left eye.
I caught it…
I watched it soak into the edge
of a paper napkin and sealed it in a tiny bag.
No words were necessary.
She was out of earshot –
out of the audible range
of the childlike pleadings of stay.
She was at last where she longed to be;
the two of them as one again.
Somewhere safe above the storm,
laughing like children and holding hands.
It was the last time I saw
her and daddy together.
*It was the worst spring storm I can recall. I had barely made it home before the bottom fell out and I was enjoying the heavenly show. I know it seems ‘abnormal’ but I do love a good storm. This one was raging an hour’s drive in any direction.
I was on the phone talking to my youngest sister when the doctor called.
I had just told her our mother was alert and talking, she looked good and her condition was stable. Moments later the doctor was contradicting me.
“Your mother went into cardiac arrest blah blah blah. I was not aware of the DNR blah blah blah. We are in the process of trying to restart her heart, doing CPR blah blah blah. Do you want us to continue blah blah blah?”
There was no problem with the connection yet his gentle voice came in shrill broken fragments. I had him [the doctor]on one line, my youngest sister on another and I was frozen between them. I must have asked, “what should I do?”
I recall my sister choking out the words “let her go.”
My husband had the truck ready before I could hang up the phone.
The photo above is where I laid flowers on the memorial today; the memorial I made for myself – where I planted the last tear that I mentioned in the poem.
Purple was her favorite color. There is only a small red sandstone (from her native east Texas) marking the teardrop’s final resting place.
Between the garden and the grandkids I have completely neglected NPM. tsk tsk tsk
I must somehow set aside a bit of quality time for National Poetry Month in days remaining. I just must! Maybe I’ll set an alarm for that too. I only have fifty-gillion to five-gazillion alarms already.
So today I said to myself, “self you need to read one and post one.” Of course that won’t catch me up. So I read Too Much Pain by Donna Ashworth. And for a post I went willy-nilly and typed “22” into one of my files and this is what popped up.
Some people do the same thing when looking for a bible verse to inspire/guide/comfort and swear that fate will always give you an appropriate response.
