Before and After Day 3, part 2, What I wrote on the Plane

(Start HERE for full “Before and After” series)

Alone Again

I am in the middle of a DC10.
It’s dark. We don’t turn on
the overhead light. I can’t believe
I am taking this journey.

Mom and Dad
sitting across the aisle
a few rows ahead
their hearts breaking
like mine.

 

“I’ll miss his phone calls,”
Daddy murmers sadly.
Mom, so recently ill,
how can she stand to lose
yet another child.

Galen beside me
has lost a much-loved
Brother-in Law.

I have lost yet another sibling
Each of us, lost in our own pain

I grab my journal and a pen
Somehow, I know.
I must write.

****************

An only child again
Eight years apart.
He’s smart
He’s funny.
He tells sad, bad, jokes.
And now he is gone
from our lives.
Who will make us laugh now?

Fifter years ago: 1956
A little girl, age seven, asks
“Where do babies come from?”
Her parents tell her,
“God makes them.”
She prays
and prays
and prays

She has her baby brother.

They knew all along
this would be a baby boy.
After all, she prayed for a baby
brother.
Why would God bother
answering her prayer
only partly?

 50 years later – November 7, 2005
A 57-year-old “little girl”
prays
and prays
and prays
to keep him.

This time God says “no.”

She doesn’t understand.

Five months ago,
in her journal
in a letter to God,
she promiseS
if anything, painful
happens in her life
she will still
love him.

She might be angry,
and
she will still love him.

She still does, but
she doesn’t understand.
Her heart is broken.
and
she will keep the promise
she made to God
in her journal
five months ago.

Click HERE as the story unfolds, Day 4, part 1