A Poetic Series - Grieving the Death of a Grown Child - "Reality" (A Daughter's Death)
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“HeartSpun Talk from the Crucible of Experience”©
From the life of Ken Matthies - Author, Poet, Real Life Storyteller
This was a poem written in trembling anticipation of the second anniversary of her death due to arrive in its full force and fury the following day – a harsh truth about anniversaries every grieving parent will know to be true.
Realityrn(A Daughter’s Death)
It’s been two years since my daughter’s deathr
And my heart still feels empty and tight!
I know and accept all the reasons she diedr
And still – it just doesn’t feel right!
A mechanical failure – a part that broke –
And a shattering plummet to ground!
The reasons make sense – yet the words have teeth,
And I can’t dodge the way that they sound!
The television networks we’re watching these daysr
Are all focused on “reality” shows;
Well I’m sorry to say that these pale in the mistsr
When you’ve seen your daughter in casket clothes!
You want something “real” that snaps and bitesr
At the foundations of all you believe?
Your own child’s death is as “real” as it getsr
While you deal with the pain – and you grieve!
They say over time that all wounds heal,
And my spirit aches for the words to be true!
I want to believe to the depths of my soul,
Yet it’s tough – would it be easy for you?
No one else knows till that fateful dayr
When their own child is called to the sky,
What a parent endures and struggles to lea
While they fight their emotions – and cry!
So much that is gone – so much that is lost –
And memories are all that is left,
To treasure and enfold in the depths of your heartr
While your soul feels alone and bereft!
I was given the gift of words of hoper
To quote on her funeral day;
Yet my heart still cries out in awful painr
That I needed to have them to say!
For two years I’ve fought to tuck her awayr
In the deepest of the depths of my grief!
With unspoken words and unfelt thoughtsr
I slammed a lid on my disbelief!
But this “reality” talks – she still has her own voicer
That whispers with sweetness and light,
That she loves me and wants to do all she canr
To comfort and make it all right!
So these tears on my face that flow as I weepr
Are her gift of healing and love,
As she gently reminds me to let it all gor
And remember she still lives – Above!
She says Creator knows all the waysr
I’ve chosen to stopper my grief;
And that all the help I ever will needr
Is contained in my seeds of belief!
Belief that time – while never removedr
From the “reality” of my daughter’s death;
Will heal my heart and help me believer
That in heave
I’ll again feel her breath!
Written in love, pain, and healing,
Dadr
August 7, 2004
© M. Kenneth Matthies
Article author
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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