Everyone has experienced a loss; many are going through this right now.  In between making the funeral and burial arrangements you are also making plans to say goodbye to your loved one but the words don’t come easy.   What do you say? How do you say it? It’s hard to cope at times like these especially when you have to stand before others to bid your farewells to that special someone because you have so much on your mind that you might not be able to say what you want at the exact moment. Many people say their farewells on the obituary in the form of a poem using words that they have made their own, others have words that just come to them on the spot but whatever words you use or were chosen by you your loved one knows it’s from the heart.

 When I lost my uncle to a car accident not too long ago I didn’t have words to say but I wanted to say something to let him know that I cared.  I had a fear at the time of speaking publicly but no fear of doing anything else publicly like singing.  The words didn’t come to me because of the things my family was experiencing at the time not knowing if the death was accidental. I had so much going on in my head with so much that I did want to say to my uncle that I felt others wouldn’t understand.  I started to write down some things but kept getting stuck so I figured that I would just do a poem.

Though I had written poetry on and off this type of poetry I had never done so I was quite puzzled as to how my words would sound, this continued for days then I came across the book “Do not stand at my grave and weep”.  The title alone caught me because I knew that’s exactly what my uncle would have said. He was a cheerful man always available to lend a helping hand; he had a love for the entire family with a special love for his nephews and nieces being he didn’t have any children of his own.

 Looking through the book of over 250 poems for memorials, funerals, eulogies and inner peace I found exactly what I needed. I’d found the words that were puzzled in my head right there in the book as if someone was thinking of what I had in mind that knew us personally.  Although I picked the one out that I wanted to use on the obituary I just kept reading and reading through the pages. My whole attitude suddenly changed because before the reading I had been really angry as well that god has chosen to take him from us all, wondering if he had been ready to go, wondering what his last moments were like, suddenly I was able to start slowly releasing the anger, slowly I was able to let go realizing that things happen for a reason. 

Many people have lost a mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, friend but are unable to let go of the hurt and denial to find peace, this is the type of thing that those people need to come across to find peace in the situation at hand. You find peace within yourself when you allow yourself to open up, that’s what happened for me, that’s what I wish was so easy for others going through tragedies. I had a cry as I surfed the pages, I had a couple of cries but all while I was reading I could feel someone holding me, making me stronger, the strength was inside me and inside the pages, I knew that when I couldn’t put it down.  Whatever you are going through at the moment will get better with time all you have to do is find your comfort spot.