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A Poetic Series - Grieving the Death of a Grown Child - "I Choose It Now"

Topic: Grief and LossBy Ken MatthiesPublished Recently added

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“HeartSpun Talk from the Crucible of Experience”©

From the life of Ken Matthies - Author, Poet, Real Life Storyteller

This was my poem of decision – written in the realization that it was finally time for the ‘rubber to hit the road’ of my future life in a meaningful way despite the fact that I was still a healing dad. I knew I was on a journey of healing but felt the compelling force of these questions within me of…”where do I go from here, and how do I get there?” I needed to know their answers.

It turned out to be the poetically written step which made the difference for me – my first reaching out towards the Integration Mending the Heart* cycle of grief – the one that would ultimately lead me to the healing of journey’s end and the beginning of the newly reintegrated life waiting for me there.

I Choose It Now

I don’t know where the road will lead; I just know it’s still up a hill.
I think I’ve finally found a healing creed; but it’s all controlled by my Will.

So will I let it lead me right; or maybe take another wrong turn?
I know I’m tired of this long, long fight; and the hurt of its awful burn.

I’ve got more choices to make this day, and for all of the ones yet to come.
With my heart out front I’m feeling the Way; and I’m hoping I’ll be healing some.

A chopper flies by way up in the air; and my breath still stutters to a stop.
I can’t help but see her then in His care; yet my soul harvests pain as a crop.

There’s a hole in my life that I can’t fill in; there’s no patch that’ll cover the wound.
To say it’s not true would be a mortal sin; so the notes of my song still aren’t tuned.

Since my Will is director of the songs I sing, whether now or in the days that arrive;
I believe I’ll find me some notes that ring all the glory of what I know I’ll survive.

After all its Creator who gives me life, though He’s chosen to take my daughter’s away.
So I’m sure He’ll heal all the hurts and the strife, while I wait here awhile and I pray.

I remember the words my mother said, when I asked her how she’d managed to liver
Through the agony raw of six kids dead; all she had was the prayers left to give.

So I think it’s the truth which is pointing the way; that our spirits now need to be joinedr
To the One who really should have His say; and the great wealth of healing to be coined.

So our healing’s to be found in a spiritual quest that will Light up the darkness of all pain,
What we need to do to arrive at our rest, is find the faith that will prove to our gain.

Where to go, how to get there now seems so clear; it’s a path that I choose now to walk.
In the hands of our Creator there is no fear; and He’s free all the time for a talk.

Thanks for your Dad’s Best Healing Poem, Sweetheart!
Love You Leila – Always and Foreverr
Love, Dad

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About the Author

For almost forty years of his life Ken Matthies has been a writer and chronicler of life expressed in poetic form, following the family tradition laid down by his grandfather before him.

Faced with the dramatically life altering experience of his helicopter pilot daughter’s sudden death in 2002 he has grown to also become a literary author of true events based on his own life. Though grief opened his literary doors it is the Light of Love and Memories supplying the fuel of inspiration to write through them.

As a second-chance dad given the opportunity to verbally share his life stories with his newly rediscovered daughter it was she who told him that she believed him to be a ‘worthy man’ after having heard them, and who encouraged him that they should be shared in written form beyond her own life – not yet knowing as she said it that she was soon to leave him behind. As a bereaved father and writer learning how to live life again in the Light of his own Love and Memories of his daughter, he writes those stories now as a testament to her belief and faith in their value.

His full length book entitled "How to Survive the Death of a Child - A Father's Story of Healing Light" was the first of these stories which he wrote in the Light of those Love and Memories.

He lives in the solitude and grandeur of a tiny southern Yukon village with his Tlingit native wife Skoehoeteen and the successor to their venerable old Tahltan bear dog Clancy Underfoot, who now happily awaits them at the Rainbow Bridge in Doggy Heaven. She’s a new female puppy named Hlinukts Seew which means ‘Sweet Rain’ in the Tlingit language, a wonderful phonetic variation in memory of Clancy’s name who was also called C.U. for short. It’s a good place to tell those stories from.

You can read more of Ken's writings and find his Amazon Kindle book at www.kenmatthies.com.

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