4 O’Clock In The Morning

May 15, 2008 at 2:01 am · Filed under family and tagged: death, grief, love, mother, poem, Poetica, poetry, spirit

I lost my mother on November 3, 2007.
This is a poem I wrote for her.

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4 O’Clock In The Morning

It’s 4 o’clock in the morning
and again i awake
out of a deep, deep sleep.

This is one 4 o’clock out of a long string
of 4 o’clocks
where i awake once again
since you’ve been gone.

Is it your spirit knocking,
i ask myself?
Trying to say that good-bye
we never got to say?

It’s 4 o’clock in the morning
and again i awake
and as i awake
the wave of grief hits me again
and again and again
like it was new again
like that phone call out of the blue
on that oh so grey November day

i can still hear the echo of my denial
at those heart-wrenching unexpected words -
Mommy is gone.

NO! i screamed
because i didn’t
get to say good-bye.
NO! i screamed because i didn‘t
get the chance to say
i love you one more time.
NO! i screamed because i didn’t
get to hear
i love you too in return.
NO! i screamed because i didn’t
even know
you were slipping out
of this world into the next.
NO! i screamed because i didn’t
get to hold you in my arms
one last time.
NO! i screamed because i didn’t
get to see your beloved face
smiling at me one last time.
NO! i screamed because
there is something so wrong in the world
when a child, no matter what age,
loses a mother.
NO! i screamed because
i felt a world and heavy heart
filled with a myriad regrets
of all the things i didn’t
get to say/get to do
with you one last time.
NO! i screamed because
my heart felt such a piercing pain
i felt like i would die from it.

In this terribly grief-filled moment
it’s 4 o’clock in the morning
and this fresh wave hits me again and again
as if i just picked up that phone
and heard that bad news of all bad news
just now, for the first time.

i don’t know why i always wake
at 4 o’clock in the morning
every day since you’ve been gone.
This rain of 4 o’clocks hits my heart hard
and i wake up crying each and every time
because there is no answer to this grief.

i keep searching for the Light in my days
to make sense of my existence and this universe
since i’ve been forced to live in it without a mother
but there is no answer.
My heart is still raw with this bottomless grief
that dulls my mind and heart
with a constant incomprehension.

When will i believe, i ask myself?
When will i accept this simple fact
that you are gone?
When will i have the answers in my mind and heart
that will let me move on past
this dreadful moment in time
when all i see out in the world
is a million reminders of my mom
and the missing of her,
in this world where she once walked?

When?

When i see mothers and their babies
battling the snow
to go out and about on their way,
i smile at them, these mothers and babies -
but i also feel a pain and think
once i was this miracle creation
safe in my mother’s arms
safely surrounded by her love
and now she’s gone
and the safe is gone out of my world with her.

Within a week’s time
it will be almost exactly 39 years ago
my mother came home from the hospital
with me in her arms, held oh so tight,
on the way home from the hospital
when i was born
in the middle of a snowstorm,
mother of all snowstorms,
just like this snow that fell this past week.

And part of me deep inside
holds this sense memory
of being brought home in my mother’s arms
safe and sound in this strange strange world
outside the beautifully nurturing waters
of my mother’s womb.
A new life began then,
39 years ago.

Today, i am tasting keenly the pain
of a life ending
my mother’s life
and my old life,
where in my world my mother lived on,
and i still could reach out
just one more time
to say
i love you, mom
te voglio bene assai mammina.

It’s 4 o’clock in the morning
and i don’t know why
i awake yet again.

All i know is
you are gone
and it’s like the news just hit my heart
with that bottomless grief
for the first time,
all over again.

It’s 4 o’clock in the morning
and i am
missing
you,
mom.

~ Poetica 19/12/2007 5:21:24 AM

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