What Was Lost & What Was Found – Part 2

Some journeys take you forward along the path of life, while others take you back, helping to form a different and better version of yourself, now somehow forever changed. The three days in Atlanta, whether reading my poem or just spending time with my mom and cousin Linda, did both: moving me forward, while at the same time circling me back upon myself. The experience helped blunt the edges of some painful memories, overlaying them with better ones.

What Was Lost & What Was Found – Part 1

Death was no stranger to me in childhood. It’s a simple truth, yet so much more lurks behind it. Attending my Great-Aunt Francie’s funeral is one of my earliest memories, and I’m pretty sure I went to about a funeral a year through high school, with Grandpa Phil dying my sophomore year and Grandma Esther my junior. By the time I met Doug, in the summer before senior year, I had no living grandparents. I dreaded funerals and took no comfort in the Mourner’s Kaddish, which I’d learned by heart when I was far, far too young.

Unless You Know

Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Unless you know

what it is to look

at black & white proof

at lambs led to slaughter

at herds of the lost

at ghosts of a people

And know they were yours

And know they are you