Remembering...

October second is the anniversary of the death of my husband, Carl, many years ago, but each late September, as summer turns to autumn, a miasma of depression grasps me, coloring many of the days with a grayness which saps strength and purpose. I have been here often enough to know it is temporary, but it always sneaks up on me and hits me in the solar plexus with a sucker punch of a grief I long felt was over and done. Guess the work of grief never ends...really.

"Tears on my pillow,
  Pain in my heart..."
Words from long ago,
sung in a different time,
    for a different reason-
the bemoaning wail of
young love gone wrong-
but for me, on this autumn day
in my seventy-fourth year,
the dirge-like sound echoes
the grayness of the day,
the brokenness of my heart,
as I grieve for a lost love,
       a lost life,
       dreams shattered,
        a family bereft and adrift.
Try as I will, I cannot lift
the fog of depression
drawing me into its depths
where each September finds me,
holding me captive in the thrall
of memory and pain and loss
       and sorrow.
Tears on my pillow,
pain in my heart...
         even as I whisper to myself,
          "And this, too, shall pass."