Category Archives: grief

A System of Touch

Posted on by
Reply

these interlocking pieces-

a woman in the crowd reaches out to touch 

Slowing down motion

to Jairus’ daughter

Take this stranger by the hand

(For science, of course)

Blindfold emotion 

-While the girl lies dying-

Somehow temporarily 

All of us

nailed to this single day in history 

When you let go of 

Everything you had a right to hold

Go where we never 

want to go

Then tell Mary

Don’t touch me

Last trace of hell still on my skin

You draw us to your 

Broken.

Make us whole again

With this system of touch.

“Hear My Voice”

Posted on by
Reply

I am a big fan of Jesus, even  though he is a little scary.

Why?  Well, there is the dying for the sins of the world thing, but there is also the stuff he idly seems to throw into his parables–weeping and gnashing of teeth, something about being salted with fire.

CS Lewis is right, he is not a tame lion.  He is the only and original badass and he more than deserves to be the divisor of before and after in human history.

Years ago I cried when I read an article about a nurse who visited new and at-risk parents.  She said that years later the babies she had visited would recognize her voice when they heard her in random places.

This mattered to me because I have a baby out there somewhere who might recognize my voice even though she was just 14 months old when she was taken from me.

The voice of love–that is what I hear when I read Jesus.  He is, by turns, funny, deadly incisive, ironic, and passionately in love with us.

Crucifixion and resurrection kind of passionately in love.

When I lost my little foster daughter I grieved beyond what is comfortable to describe.  I took my cry to God–why?

His voice was clear–if you have to choose for her to know just one of us, you or Me?  Which would you choose?

Him, of course.

Always and only Him, baby girl.

Hear his voice.

John 10:2-5

Protecting the guilty?

Posted on by
Reply

Viola Davis has recently joined the long list of celebrities who have spoken out against sexual assault–rape, often in the context of their own victimization.

I could write a list of the men and women who have helped other victims by speaking out as sexual assault survivors.  I could not give you a list of the names of the perps.

Why?

The ongoing controversy surrounding abuse allegations made by Corey Haim before his death gives us some clues–

  • Victims are often related to their perps
  • The perp has power in the community
  • Fear of exposure 
  • Fear of legal action

And yet if we are honest, we all have a list–the creepy uncle, the duplicitous coach, the father who harms his own child, a neighbor, a brother-in-law, a once-beloved actor.  People we know abused someone because that someone said so, maybe at great personal cost, maybe with no positive protection of the law.

Keeping silent about predators gives them freedom to continue to abuse.  

So here, a name–

My adopted son is short, overweight, ginger, born February of  1994.  Last I heard he worked at the automotive center at a Walmart in Kansas City, KS. His name is Charles Allen Lee.

He has sexually abused very young children.  He has exhibited cruelty toward animals.  He can be very persuasive and does not tell the whole truth.

And if you asked him about me?  If you ask him about me he will tell you I just bring the drama.

And if you ask him about him?  He will not tell you the whole truth.

…because the whole truth is…

Devastating.

Heroin Gone

Posted on by
2

Looks like deep

Sleep

Draped across the seat

across the bodies of these hungry

Children

 Immobilizing poison

Shot into blood vessels, skin 

I call to you, no answer

Try to warn you

This venal monster 

Hunts then kills its prey

No answer, Sleeping Beauty

Already heroin gone

Who takes apples from strangers in a storm?

Do you believe in ever after?

All the tropes of fairy tales will not save us from 

The story of a little girl trapped

In this worst kind

Of nightmare tries to call

for help

Nothing left

As the anatomical apparatus for sound and breath:

Lungs, rib cage, windpipe 

Collapses beneath the weight,

The force of  blows to this chest,

All alone,

Of the used-to-be

girl.

God of the Impossible

Posted on by
Reply

John 11:4 NIV[4] When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”

What is impossible?  Is gravity?  The suspension of gravity?  Space flight? Sea urchins?

We live in a world filled with wonder and darkness.  The wonder feels improbably miraculous until the darkness throws an extreme curve ball and bam!

Death takes all.

Or so it seems.

When Jesus says this sickness will not end in death it seems like he knows what he is talking about.

Several days later when he weeps with the mourners he seems like a total nut job.  Until…

I am going to hold that until–single note sung in the dark.

Some of the untils we weep through are excoriating, catastrophic…terminal.

It is important to pause at Jesus’ pronouncement.  If you know the story you might be tempted to breeze through to “the good stuff,” but in this case time takes the stage–time for Lazarus to go from well to unwell, time for Lazarus to go from unwell to fatally ill.  Time for Lazarus to die.  Time for Lazarus to be prepared for the grave.  Time for grief.  Disbelief.  Sorrow. Anger. 

And the apparent  absence of Jesus.

But…

He is not absent.  He is impossible.  He is the God of the impossible.

Wait.  Impossible means powerless, the opposite of able.  

How can God, by his very nature omnipotent, be defined as not able.

Deliberately. He was intentionally…

“not able” in death.

“not able” on the Cross.

“not able” for us.

Jesus called Lazarus out of the grave in preparation for his own death.  He gave his followers an impossible four day route through death and burial so that when it was his death they would only have to wait three days.

The three darkest days of history.  Three impossible days.

Until…

Sunday morning and the God of impossible things walks back in.

When you were little your foster father would throw you in the air above him.  Within one second your face would register fear, exhilaration,  joy, laughter.

It has always been a picture in my head–this God of sea urchins and dwarf stars throws us high up in the air for each single looped thread in the seam of  all eternity.  

The fear and uncertainty only bearable when we know, know, know…

He will catch us in His arms.

As He has already caught your beautiful mama, let Him catch us too…

Forever.

Safe in the outstretched arms 

of Love.

Luke 18:27 NIV

[27] Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”

Little Sister

Posted on by
Reply

for seven years

in the back of my head

there has been a terrible 

Terrible story 

started a long time ago

When a 15 year old boy

hurt his little sister 

(Bad)

and then…

Our paths separate at this point.

And I only know the story of the other 15 year-old-November-16-2009-boy

Because I talked about you, Charles, my-used-to-be-son

All the time

Until tonight I did not know your doppelgänger’s name–

Jamar Pinkney, Jr.
Or the queasy details

No, not the terribly private awful

…the public strange

—don’t call a child molester “Teddy Bear” or put his face on your t-shirt

Ask instead–

How in God’s name…

Is his little sister?

Jacob Wetterling 

Posted on by
Reply

they say you should not 

look directly 

at the sun

ignoring the real possibility 

that it is the night 

that has already

blinded us

To the scared, cold, 

Ordinary child

In each photograph

Owned by 

This oddball monster

While the dying sun,

Claw-handed scribe, failing light,

Scribbles justicejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejustice…justicejusticejustice

Into one kind of eternity

Or another

Minotaur

Posted on by
Reply

these stories we tell

of bartering children for the status quo

are older than the Minotaur 

dark, iconic monster

who most resembles our complacency

As long as the child sent into the labyrinth is not my own

we mutter, a sotto voce offering

To the god of what it would cost to save them all

He, unlike the Minotaur, is a natty dresser

With advanced degrees and a split-level colonial

He tsk-tsks about the rising price of safety

Rams our collective shame into his artisanally-crafted

Italian briefcase

pets his children and standard

Poodle 

with the same idle indifference 

Ignoring the growing sport 

Of hunting children

In the labyrinthine

minds of men who have traded 

The suffering of this human child

For their own eternal 

Souls.

little girl gone

Posted on by
Reply

you search for a word for this kind of thing–

boat lost at sea

balloon gone untethered

the appropriation of breakup

…songs

we used to sing as lullabies

now ectoplasmic

only you are the ghost in your own

skin

house

grief

rolls this monster

wave over you

grief-stricken mama

trapped inside this Chinese box

feel the wounds born into

each wrist

howl, howl, howl

hours before dark