ANOTHER DAY

For months I dreaded the sunsets
and their memories of more plesant ones shared together
becaue they only marked the passing
of another day without her.

Ant then I remembered the sunsets and their pain
claiming they marked survial of another day without her
but found myself merely waiting
for grief and time to end somehow.

Now I sit beneath the cloudless sky watching the long shadows of the mountains
trace across the land at sunset.
I smile, somewhat feebly, at memories of more pleasant ones shared together,
mark another day passing in my life,
instead of hours spent without her,
and want more time to become myself again,
to collect this shattered mess into something more than sorrow.

Sorry my ,Love, but you were not all that was.
Neither one of us arrived empty handed when we met,
and we both grew and gained before we had to part.
Many people contributed to the things inside me.
It's just that death casts such poinancy into memories
the perspective is lost for so long a time.
And speaking to you without getting lost in the saddness is
still difficult.

Your illness and death tought me that the things
I've valued most came from someone else.
And at one point, you helped a shy selfish young man
care about more than himself as he learned to understand
what to love and to cherish means.
And in its practice, love brought us more than we had before
and made us more than we were by ourselves alone.

So if you've eyes among those stars emerging from the darkened sky,
you'll see I carry parts of you forward with me.
I can't live out what might have been the rest of my life for you,
but as I live out the rest of my life for me,
your love, your life,and your spirit are here.
They are things I treasure and hold dear,
and I no longer have fear of their fading.
Your spirit was bright bvefore it met mine
and doesn't require me as its keeper.

I can only pass on what comes from the both of us.
human nature being what it is, you'll have to pardon the times
I take more credit for myself than is due,
but when I give of myself and find joy in this life
I know in a large part, the credit should go to you.

The things I've been and the things I miss are most certainly
part of what I've now become.  And although, after 17 months,
there is still a bit of emptyness or hollowness to it all,
it is again, finally, somehow okay to be here and to take joy in just living.

by Michael Goshorn June 1994