Five Long Years by Betty Anderson Dworschak

This poem was sent to us yesterday by our dear college friend, Betty. Thank you, Betty.

Five Long Years

It’s been five long years since that fateful day

When your darkest fears met the black void of grief and loss

Five years of stark reality that stretch out and contract

Suddenly.  impulsively.  painfully.

You feel the sharp sting of the endless rubber band

Around your heart and stare unseeing, uncomprehending

At the rosary you now carry with you always.

And yet

You grapple to come to terms

You clutch and convey your memories

You snatch moments of joy

You seize chances to connect, to bond, to love

You risk your heart to change the unwritten future of strangers

You speak for those who have become your furtive family

Struggling in a silent sadness you know all too well.

It’s been five long years since that fateful day

When the gauntlet was ripped from your flesh

And thrown down, unbidden and unwanted

Your existence made raw, a gaping abyss before you

With no way back to the safe past.

Forward, with footsteps unsure but resolute,

You defy the emptiness and deify the love.

There is no higher purpose.

We

We who did not hear the shriek rise from our own throats

We who did not discover that the awful terror was coming from within us

We who did not stagger from that shock

Can never know, or presume to touch your loss,

A wound healing but never healed.

But

We can bear witness and stand by you

We can let in and soak up the memories you share

Unafraid of your immeasurable grief, never measuring,

Poised to tender what small solace surfaces and survives.

It’s been five long years since that fateful day.

Far away and in all ways, so far, and so far removed

Distant, but with arms wide open, I have but one small gift to give,

An ephemeral embodiment of the spirit that lives on in you.

The horrible moment has not destroyed you.