AFTER ALL THIS

After all this time,

all these years,

all the pain

and all the tears

I´m still here.

After agony of loss

and shock and disbelief

After years of missing

and aching and restructuring

I´m still here.

Still here trying to write

Still here creating laments

Still here because grief is still real,

Still here because it keeps changing,

throwing me off my game.

Still here because I´ve nowhere else to go...

After relapses and seasons

valleys and waves

After anger and bargaining,

spirals and pain and feeling lost,

I´m still here.

After darkness and candleless nights,

sad holidays and lost identity

After arguments and setbacks

recesses and repercussions,

I´m still here.

After two steps forward and three back

one person up and three down

or any other combination thereof,

there is no sense of healing for all,

no harmony or peace or the happiness of before.

Where are those days?

Why must they be gone just because she is gone?

Why can´t we move on?

Why can´t we all be well at once?

What has happened to my life,

to our life?

Nothing looks the same to me.

A most precious thing has been taken from me -

the very faith of my children.

As if losing Jenna wasn´t enough!

All I wanted was for them to see and love you like I...

But I have not been able to protect their beliefs, their worldview

Somehow in the midst of the years of grief,

they decided You were not real.

I have failed.

I am devastated.

How could I not protect them in the midst of such pain and vulnerability?

Five plus years later and I am still a mess

So many emotions and so little capacity

So inward focused, so unpredictable

I long to be stable,

to be healthy...

But I am struggling to hold it together.

I have questions and doubts

we have so much love (thank God)

yet faith is gone, it is no longer central;

We all felt the division at Easter...

It split us in two

And I am grieving this loss.

Jenna would have understood me

She would have known without a word

She would have sensed it and made sense of it for me.

She was special that way.

Somehow COVID has stirred up old stuff

I thought things were better

Yet I struggle to sleep and to stay calm

my health announces that my body is grieving;

I don´t  know how I am anymore.

Oh please bring my children home to You!

Bring them back to your love!

I cannot live this way in defeat

letting the enemy have his way

Please break through

please triumph

please be God to them again.

I know the seeds are there,

The years of love and stories (real ones),

of insights and prayers,

of true love and belief;

of transformation...

they beat in my heart

And echo through the corridors of many years.

After all this

I am still here.

You are my love

where else would I go?

You alone have the words of life;

please breathe them over us all.

Breathe them over all the pain, the tears and the years...

For after all this,

I am still here.

Photo by:  Claudia Dea