Poems for healing is the way the article described them.  It caught my attention, especially when I read that Natasha Josefowitz had written these poems after losing her husband of 35 years.

He died of cancer.

The name of this book is “Living Without the One You Cannot Live Without”

This series of poems, almost 100 of them, begin at diagnosis.

Josefowitz has written many books, she’s hosted her own radio show, written columns, but this book sounds like it hits home.  In fact she said she wrote it after feeling “alienated despite her best intentions to put on a smiling face wherever she went.”  This according to a recent review of the book.

This poem is from that recent review:

LOST in the PERIPHERY

After my husband died

I was no longer

the center of anyone’s life

nor is anyone

the center of mine

family and friends

are supportive and comforting

but they are peripheral

as I am peripheral

in their lives

they can continue

without me

as I am supposed

to continue

without him

without the one person

I cannot live without

It sounds to me like these poems, may have started out as a self help exercise to smooth the way through the author’s grieving process.  We’ve all discovered our own ways of making the best out of that uncomfortable passage.

What I have discovered through all of this; It is an ongoing journey.  There is only “healing,” but never “healed.”