Some days
we celebrate meetings,
marrying, birthing
but others days
without gifts, cakes, and kisses
resonate loss
we call healed
that still stirs, deep and quiet
under the sternum,
waking for a moment
when eyes meet the calendar
and we pause, count the years
on our fingers. This is your day,
sister, and I have reached 18–
almost four hands of fingers
without you.
Susan Daniels Poetry 
Grieve not, Susan. She sleeps well. and she feels your loves which heaves and breathes.
Thanks, Noel. Not grief, truly, after all these years. More a pause, and remembering. She does sleep well, and thank you.
There are so many different levels of “healed”. Early death is so tragic and never forgotten. Wishing you a hug Susan.
Thank you, David. You are right. There is always that memory, carried deep. We go on with life, find happiness again, but a few times a year, it does rise up and remind us. Hugs back, and thanks.
Such sadness and longing and beauty captured with a few simple words.
Stephen, thank you.
((hugs susan)) must be so difficult…
Claudia, thanks. More of a moment of remembered pain and perhaps a little wondering what might have been otherwise. You are so sweet.
Thanks for giving me an extra remembering moment for those who left me behind here. Lovely and poignant. My heart sighs with this poem.
Alice, thank you. Mine sighed too, as I wrote it.
Touching Susan. I lost my sister 18 years ago this last Halloween-time. I think I kind of forgot how long I until remembered she was 42 when she passed and 18 years older than I so…here I am at 42…scratching my head…and still learning acceptance.
Thanks, Johnny. So sorry about your sister, too. Acceptance is a difficult thing for me with this one–but it has mellowed ovver the years, so I guess I can call it acceptance 😉
Thinking of you 🙂 I too have loss in my life right now and am going to a funeral tomorrow, another family death. Heartbreak heals but only with time and we never forget the loved ones who pass, I too count the years, pause to remember on anniversaries and birthdays and I still get a day when I need to be still, to take time out from the world, remember and move on again.
Thank you–that is it, exactly, a moment of reflection. So sorry for your loss.
Read this earlier, but couldn’t comment. Love and blessings
Boomie, thank you, sis.
How wonderful your tribute, yes a time not so much of grief or tears but of memories.
Thank you, Rambly.
It is well, Susan. Lots of Love to you
Thanks, C.
*hugs* Just reading it is an emotional experience, so many buttons it pushes.
Nelle, thank you–and for the hug too!