The experience at the Memorial helped me deal with my experience as well as my wife’s illness. It was during the last five years of my wife’s illness that I became aware that she was dying. I remember the day I realized I was losing her. We were in the hospital so she could receive her MRI exam. When I saw her coming out of the examination room, a poem came to me.
That night I worked on the poem. It was during the composition that I realized my anxiety over the death of my comrade was linked to my inability to speak to him and listen to him. I decided that I needed to communicate with my wife in a special way. I had to be present with her in the moment. Of course that is easy to say, but impossible to do. Still, it did contribute to a better …show more content…
I knew I could never find his mother, but I wrote her, and the poem, Somewhere Between the Beginning and the Present, which was the first time I could express the emotional crisis caused by becoming a survivor as a result of prejudice.
Although the writing about experiences didn’t relieve my anxiety a 100%, it has enabled me live with a modicum of emotional distress. After my wife passed, my poems about her and Smitty connect me not only with them but with all the ones I loved, who have died.
I realize that the character in most of my poems live among my memories of the dead. It is as if the fly overhead and every once in a while their shadows fall upon my vision. Thus my writings bring to me a touch of peace as well as a touch of sadness, which I suppose is the way I grieve for those whom I’ve loved.
Sharing our experiences about cancer and war enabled my wife and me to cope with her terminal illness. Having here as a confident was like writing in a community. I believe this small community is like any community which honestly engages in the life of its members, and this community enabled me to braid my experience with hers into a long and continuous tale of
That night I worked on the poem. It was during the composition that I realized my anxiety over the death of my comrade was linked to my inability to speak to him and listen to him. I decided that I needed to communicate with my wife in a special way. I had to be present with her in the moment. Of course that is easy to say, but impossible to do. Still, it did contribute to a better …show more content…
I knew I could never find his mother, but I wrote her, and the poem, Somewhere Between the Beginning and the Present, which was the first time I could express the emotional crisis caused by becoming a survivor as a result of prejudice.
Although the writing about experiences didn’t relieve my anxiety a 100%, it has enabled me live with a modicum of emotional distress. After my wife passed, my poems about her and Smitty connect me not only with them but with all the ones I loved, who have died.
I realize that the character in most of my poems live among my memories of the dead. It is as if the fly overhead and every once in a while their shadows fall upon my vision. Thus my writings bring to me a touch of peace as well as a touch of sadness, which I suppose is the way I grieve for those whom I’ve loved.
Sharing our experiences about cancer and war enabled my wife and me to cope with her terminal illness. Having here as a confident was like writing in a community. I believe this small community is like any community which honestly engages in the life of its members, and this community enabled me to braid my experience with hers into a long and continuous tale of