How great to live your life with the qualities of those we lost. Take pieces of their heart and walk each day with it.

We dont talk about him anymore but I know he is there inside of her. We share this bond of him. Although he is lost physically to us, he lives on and will always be a part of me and her. We dont need words. We spoke as we collected our Rocks today and looked for their unique qualities. We thought of him as we found our colors in the leaves we collected. This is what I showed him as a child and he in return to her. We were all together today.

When you try your best, but you don’t succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can’t sleep

 

Stuck in reverse
And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can’t replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

And high up above or down below
When you’re too in love to let it go
But if you never try you’ll never know
Just what you’re worth

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

“— Canyon City

By Pearl E Buck (article written)

Drawn by my son Billy Dehmer

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create—so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.

The Dragonfly Story

By Walter Dudley Cavert

“In the bottom of an old pond lived some grubs who could not understand why none of their group ever came back after crawling up the lily stems to the top of the water. They promised each other that the next one who was called to make the upward climb would return and tell what had happened to him. Soon one of them felt an urgent impulse to seek the surface; he rested himself on the top of a lily pad and went through a glorious transformation which made him a dragonfly with beautiful wings. In vain he tried to keep his promise. Flying back and forth over the pond, he peered down at his friends below. Then he realized that even if they could see him they would not recognize such a radiant creature as one of their number.

The fact that we cannot see our friends or communicate with them after the transformation which we call death is no proof that they cease to exist.”

A Letter to the Newly Bereaved Mother

From one grieving mother’s heart to another, I’m sending you love and so much strength… There are no rules for grieving and time becomes insignificant in so many ways now.

I’m not going to lie to you. It will never be okay. It will never become easy. And the sorrow of losing your son or daughter will never lessen. What I can tell you is that it will change. You will learn to survive and live around the pain and emptiness. It will not always be as suffocating and debilitating as it is right now.

If you refuse to give up, you will find life again, in your own time. The colors will never be as vivid as they once were; however, they will return to your world one day… Time will never be your friend but rather your teacher.

Follow your heart. No one else knows what you need. It is so raw right now so simply breathe and do whatever it is that will get you to the next moment. Nothing more. It is breath by breath and moment by moment right now and for some time to come. There is no time limit, no right or wrong and no matter what you may think sometimes, you are NOT crazy or going insane. It is simply your new normal.

You also are NOT alone. There are many of us traveling this road ahead of you and many more will arrive to follow behind you. When you are ready, reach out to the hands that journey ahead of you and allow them to pull you up and forward when you fall. They are waiting, and they are infused with the strength of a million broken hearts connected throughout time and space by a pain and sorrow that is hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world and all other experiences. And if you refuse to give up, if you remember that you alone are the keeper of your son’s or daughter’s memory, you will one day find yourself taking hold of a desperate hand reaching out for help from behind you and you will realize that you too have been infused with the strength needed to pull another mother or father up and forward.

But for today and for as many tomorrows as your heart says is needed, simply breathe and grieve my sister… Breathe and grieve for your child. And do it in absolutely any way that feels right to you. Simply breathe and grieve.

Because for as long as you breathe, your son or daughter will be.
–Tammy Brown

Poem “Gentle Boy” by Mary Withers / Arline Stumpff Marla’s Mom ((POS))

This one’s for the gentle boy
Who wrestles with his pain,
His easy-bruising tender heart,
And ever-active brain.

He feels much more than others do,
But then he tries to hide,
With laughter or bravado,
The gentle boy inside.

With wit and style and artifice
His secret’s kept so well.
Who dreams the brave facade you see
Conceals some private Hell?

Meanwhile, the brutes live on and on
Their unexamined lives.
The low, the stupid, and the cruel,
The sluggish idiot thrives.

To fill the world with empty talk
And greed and hate and noise,
To breed, carouse, and make life Hell
For all the gentle boys.

Some gentle boys grow heartsick
And tired of this charade.
They blow themselves right off the Earth,
Or fight, then fail, then fade.

If you should love a gentle boy
There’s little you can do.
If he decides his time has come,
He’ll leave the Earth and you.

He cannot see that if he goes
You’ll never fill that space.
You’ll spend your whole life searching
For that laugh, that kiss, that face.

How can the gentle boy not know
You love him beyond death,
You’d help him any way you could,
Unto your dying breath?

Someday when justice reigns on Earth
We all may greet with joy
A world where it won’t hurt so much
To be a gentle boy.

I hope that this poem is a comfort to anyone who has lost a gentle boy or girl…