I was scared as I entered the parlor
only a child of eight.
A house call with mom for the last visit
with my forever-gone uncle
my dear Uncle Nate.
(818) 788-HOPE (4673)
Grief Support Groups Serving West Los Angeles, Encino and Agoura Hills
Grief Support Groups Serving West Los Angeles, Encino and Agoura Hills
Poetry (Page 3)
The morning comes and you look for a reason to get out of bed.
You want to linger for hours but force yourself to rise and take a mini step to join the day.
That is courage.
The toothbrush you hold feels like a heavy hammer but you manage to brush your teeth, wash your face, fix your hair.
That is determination.
By Lynne Goldklang
Grief is an intense missing, longing, wanting, yearning for what can never be.
Grief is loss so profound that relief is impossible, undesirable — an insult to love lost.
Grief is forever and healing an illusion of optimistic folly.
Grief is the vulture that attacks without mercy.
By Michael Arvanitis
I don’t like this. I am Lonely
And I don’t know what else to do.
Being isolated and by myself
Brings back memories of my last months with You.
By Lynn Ungar, Unitarian Minister What if you thought of itas the Jews consider the Sabbath—the most sacred of times?Cease from travel.Cease from buying and selling.Give up, just for now, on trying to make the worlddifferent than it is. Sing. Pray. Touch only thoseto whom you commit your life.Center down. And when your body has become still,reach out with your heart.Know that we are…
The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your…
Michael Linsk is a poet and HOPE Connection group alum.
My wife, lover, friend, soul mate
is no longer a warm, living, breathing part of my life.
Death intervened.
A guest came to visit
uninvited
without so much as a knock at the door.
Grief arrived…
bathed in the empty stillness left by an aching absence,
my new companion rests comfortably among reminders of earlier times.
Allowing me freedom to go about creating a new life
but still present when time slows
and the roaring silence fails to fill the gaping void.
I eat dinner standing in the kitchen
Because that’s now what I do
When I sit at the dining room table
I still expect to sit down next to you.
Don Phillipson is a writer who lives in Thousand Oaks. He was a HOPE Group member until October, 2018.
I sit in a darkened theater, beautiful blue velvet curtains, having just
descended, guard the stage.
The curtain has just come down after the third act, and I sit stunned, dazed.