Broken Winged Angel

On Tuesday I explored an old journal.  In it I found the following poem which I have re-edited.  I also came across some writing about grief and its impact on the sufferer and those around them taken from a book by Virginia Ironside called “You’ll Get Over It.” 

This poem is for my sister who died earlier this year, for the impact of what she suffered on those of us who loved her and for those who are suffering grief and depression due to invisible heartbreak or loss:

Broken winged angel

I saw your reflection

On the breast of a robin

Grown cold now

Surprised on our return

She took flight

Captured here

By a framed ceiling

She flew too high

Struggling to be free

Death

Brought her down

At nightfall we return

I carry her lifeless body

To the garden to bury it

Silent and empty

Her spirit has flown

Vacating its earthly shell

Today you tell me

My heart is empty

I feel vacant

Nothing to say

I can not connect

When an empty shell

Is all that is left

Vacant eyes

Stare through an open window

Enfolded wings

Wrapped tightly around

An imprisoned soul

Trapped in a straightjacket

The drugs they gave you

Erased and dismissed

The reality of your deep suffering

Grown mute

A hollowed out shell

Is all that remains

My most vivid memory

Of your darkest hour

There is nothing left

Only empty space

Where a beating heart once lived

You empty out all my sorrow

I traded my true identity

So that I would remain here

A victim trapped

Trying to atone

With non existence 

For the pain of your existence

The penance for

A painful aborted life

The hands of the clock

Revolved in slow motion

Over those wilderness years

Everything was erased

I entered the void of grief

And how my body ached

Over those long years

A voice deep within

Tells me it wasn’t for nothing

But there are no words

That can express

What I saw there

I don’t belong in your world

Let me rest quietly

Free of your demands

For me to be another way

Let me free to soar

Across darkened skies

With white wings

Tasting the flavour of the breeze

There is only this moment of flight

Over distant shores

Which I cover with a shadow

That in time

Will disappear and leave no trace

Yonder I flew

To the land of our ancestors

Carried only by the promise of God

Into a destiny

That will prove

A disappointment to its promise

And leave me questioning and questing

After so many years

Long years hence

The early morning claimed you

The ancestors

Called your spirit home

The weight of your damaged body

Too heavy any more

For the soul to bear

The broken winged angel

Has found her home now

On my bedside table

Overlooked by an angel of light

With both wings in tact

Tenderly holding a lamb

Was I just the witness

To a crime

To one else could bear to name

Witnessing it nearly broke me

For a time look everything

Hollowed me out

For a new beginning

What  broke you

Was the silence

Too much silence

They turned a blind eye

Your grief was heavy

Who else could bear it

This morning I read these words

Fear may make some people stay away from a bereaved person, fear of emotion but also fear of anger and rage, or worse, fear of longing, the utter craven helplessness of a bereaved person.

The absolute abandonment happens twice:  First with the loss; second with the impact of that loss or losses on the person that drives people away.  Thus is sorrow driven deep within into a place of inexplicable expression, symptom, illness, cancer or the death mute catatonia of profound depression that has no words but can only be recognised by those who have understood that darkness through resonance.  We must not quit from trying to find a way, to not turn our backs on those whose grief has lost its words and longs so mutely for our understanding,  love, tenderness and containment perhaps expressed less in words and more in the comforting touch of a hand or a soft look of empathetic mirroring.