Mourners

A poem

There is a dark empty chamber, it houses the voices of grievers, a harrowing echo of a history that will never be repeated.

Images of a time now passed fill your thoughts as you close your eyes, memories now immortalised, like wounds that will never heal.

Where do we put the words that we never got to say to those who have passed away?

Are they memorialised in verse? Shall we sing by their graves in hope that our voices are heard? And not carried off by the wind to an abyss of dark and gloom.

Do angels stand guard by the side of tombstones? Are the laments of mourners noted and carried on to a hereafter?

Or is there a separate alter? A sacred shrine for sorrowers that may grant mournful wishes, a final message to the departed.

Letting go, easy words to say to someone else; but when they are said to you, an emptiness is all you feel.

It is like a part of you is forever gone, and you wonder if you will be the same moving on. Is what is left of your being enough for you to continue to carry on?

I wish there was a blueprint to responding to tragedy, a roadmap of all the steps to take; an elixir maybe that will make the pain go away, yet such magic does not exist, we all seem to react in differing ways.

Some cry from morn to dusk, openly grieving for all eyes to see.

Others deflect and try to forget; they work till they fall, perhaps drown themselves in alcohol, hoping that memories fade or the emergence of a new reality.

There is no right nor wrong way to mourn, you can never prepare for a feeling unknown.

Unbridled shock comes at you with a raging force. In that moment you are lost for the world around you stops. A numbness consumes you, it is as if you are in a state of paralysis; aware of what has happened but your mind is still trying to quantify the severity of the news, the words that have made your world stop.

Your eyes are opened wide, face blank of all expression, passers-by attempt to speak to you but silence is what greets them, a few seconds pass along and then you are back to reality, and like a baby that has just been birthed you suddenly burst into tears.