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.”
April 16, 2014 @ 10:46 pm
True words..beautifully and sadly expressed.
April 16, 2014 @ 8:23 pm
I keep looking for the “healed”. I have moved so many times, that for once, I feel like I have a chance at finding “home”. I miss the desert, it became a part of me, a part of my healing but it was always missing something. I feel that “missing something” here too, but with my kids close, watching my grand baby grow, it feels like there is the slightest chance that I might find that “missing something” and still be able to hang onto all those memories….
It’s a journey…I had 6 years with him, it’s been 6 years since I found myself alone and the journey continues…another fork in my road and I hope this time, I made the right turn!
April 16, 2014 @ 8:25 pm
And it’s a beautiful poem….