“Pain” by Peter Graf

At our Faith In Recovery monthly dinner I sat next to one of the persons who organizes the monthly meal. I sat next to her and she mentioned today was her birthday. Another friend at the table just had his birthday, yesterday and last Thursday, as I mentioned before, my friend Ella had her birthday. I sat next to a friend, one year older than myself, who had, I believe his birthday recently. As I get older so do my friends.

The older we get the more we stare death in the face. I do not feel I will ever fully accept the death of my son, Peter before I die. But friends do help to ease the pain of death until that time. A friend, who lost her son in a car accident, sent us this poem for “family and friends of a suicide”, like us. Friends can ease the pain of death in the family.

As you huddle around the torn silence,
Each by this lonely deed exiled
To a solitary confinement of soul,
May some small glow from what has been lost
Return like the kindness of candlelight.

As your eyes strain to sift
This sudden wall of dark
And no one can say why
In such a forsaken, secret way,
This death was sent for…
May one of the lovely hours
Of memory return
Like a field of ease
Among these graveled days.

May the Angel of Wisdom
Enter this ruin of absence
And guide your minds
To receive this bitter chalice
So that you do not damage yourselves
By attending only at the hungry altar
Of regret and anger and guilt.

May you be given some inkling
That there could be something else at work
And that what to you now seems
Dark, destructive and forlorn,
Might be a destiny that looks different
From inside the eternal script.

May vision be granted to you
To see this with the eyes of providence.
May your loss become a sanctuary
Where new presence will dwell
To refine and enrich
The rest of your life
With courage and compassion.

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