In the Kubler-Ross book, On Death and Dying, she lists the five stages of grief as:
1. Denial and Isolation (some refer to it as Shock)
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
My Soul Rages was written for a 13 year old girl whose mother had cancer. Her mother had been diagnosed when she was seven years old so a good bit of her childhood was shadowed by her Mom’s treatments, fatigue and navigation of the disease. At 15 years of age, she lost her beautiful mother to metastasized breast cancer.
This young girl seemed stuck in the anger stage of grief — who wouldn’t be at 13 years old and simultaneously facing all that junior high and puberty holds? So, with love and empathy, I penned this for her. When she was grown, I introduced her to this poem and she wept. Emotions stay with us a very long time. If you have lost your own mother, what a great sorrow you must face. Grief has so many nuances, layers and emotions packed into the experience of loss, death, terminal illness and trauma. May your soul find the rest of gladness and song after its wrestling with rage, ache and longing.
My Soul Rages
My soul rages within me
When I think of you
Leaving me behind
With the lonely few.
Without you here
But gone and in the grave
I feel sad, alone, depraved.
I know it in my head
That you’ll still be alive
Among the hosts of heaven
You will live and thrive…
But my soul aches within me
What can I say?!?
I miss you already
As you so often lay,
On the plaid couch
Looking out the window pane
I know I am a grouch
But I can’t stand the strain.
So, forgive me
If I don’t understand
My heart is young
I’ve been walking in a foreign land—
Where I don’t know the language
I can’t guess ahead
My future is frozen
Like the statue beside my bed
I’ll say it loud
So you can hear it one last time
I LOVE YOU, I do!
I wish those words had more rhythm,
More rhyme.
My soul longs within me
To hear those words whispered back in my ear
‘I’ll be OK, really’
Is what I need to hear
My soul rages
My soul aches
My soul longs
When will my soul be glad?
When will my soul sing?
When will my soul rest?
My soul wonders…
cjz
1998 November 27
10 am
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