SILENT NIGHT

It is nearly impossible to comprehend or process the death of one’s mother. Mine had the most reliable and advanced moral compass of anyone I have ever known. As mother to a dozen children and wife to a somewhat maverick husband, whose fecklessness often needed tender governance, she developed diplomatic skills that would make the best global diplomats look like amateurs. 

We are facing into Christmas without her, and are reminded by the stacks of gifts she purchased and stored before she died, that the Yuletide was one of her favorite times of year, precisely because it was the family occasion. But what will Christmas be without mother? Another ‘Silent Night’, of sorts:

Silent Night

~For Mother~

This year without you will end 

in snow and shadows,

prayers like icicles will fall across 

our grief and cut it raw.

We will seek you in the carols, 

but will find only silence,

our tears thawing and flowing, 

and absence like a dead end,

like a dark empty road 

between fields under trees, 

where a lone cry can die 

into the dead of night.

This year without you will end 

with homecomings, headlights 

cleaving sylvan shadows,

and your laughter lost between.