The Solace of Slumber
And it is still
only within slumber
That I find a
solitary
solitude
of solace
An inviting seductress
Promising pleasant surroundings and fancifulness
For that moment when I glimpse your silhouette turning hastily 'round a corner
Never to be found
again
Or the moment when I'm enjoining your company and your playfulness
Even while knowing we are no longer married
But not remembering that you are really gone
Because you are alive
In my dreams
After all
Even though I know we are not "Together"
Or the trip I have been dreaming of for years
Even before you were "treatable but not curable"
Where we go to England together
And then you head home while I go to some strange foreign country I've never been to
A l o n e
And I don't enjoy travelling
to foreign places
A l o n e.
Then there are the millions of times I have to go back to school
To complete some requirement or other that I've missed relevant to some degree
(even from grade school - sometimes kindergarten)
Or I'm moving to go back to grad school
to attain yet another degree
as if that will take care of everything...
Or I'm late to teach a class and can't remember the time or the place
And I've forgotten my lecture notes
Or even when I do magically get there the class is unruly and out of control
Or the trip we are taking in the old Excursion
Where you are in the passenger seat
And I am in the middle row of seats
And there's no driver and we're moving fast
And being pitched from side to side
While we climb too fast to a place in the future where it's impossible to see
the destination
Or the dangers
on the other side
And suddenly the road runs out in a way that should have been the end for both of us
But somehow we survive
And try to get the car to avoid hitting
the multitudes
of mutilated bodies
that lie in heaps along the side
and in the middle of the roadway...
With no access to the brakes...
And even less to the steering wheel...
Everyone is dead
Everyone is dying
IN DUE TIME
And then there are the battles and the bad people who rush the buildings
And make us hide in dark places
And threaten to expose the people we have killed
And the places they are buried...
And kill us in the process
If we are not to find the hidden stairway that does not exist
For IT does NOT exist...
Or what about the elevator that mysteriously inverts
Or the plane that rolls and threatens to CRASH
Or the ocean that SWELLS
And takes us out on amazing flight-like rides
With the
lowest
lows
highs
highest
And
Even while threatening our high rise penthouse vacation condo
And taking us out far enough
To see beneath the sea to
The multitudes of whales and dolphins
That float lifelessly
Belly up
Not too far
below
the surface
Or the stairwells and jungle gyms that need climbing
And the all too familiar feeling of only being able to
move
my
feet
up
one
inch
at
a
time
And then the insurmountable
gap
that suddenly appears
And the familiar feeling of
d r e a d
as I realize
I'll
never
win
this
race...
And this is where I find my peace
THIS is where I choose to heal
Where I would gladly spend all my days
While I get used
TO
MISSING
YOU
Beth Le Poire Molineux, PHD, LMFT, is Psychosocial Services Coordinator at the Outpatient Hematology/Oncology Clinic of Ventura County Medical Center in California. Her husband, Graham Molineux, PhD, died in October 2013 after being diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme in April 2012. "This is the love poem I wrote to him on our first anniversary after he passed."