Till We See Them Again

A story to help people with grief.

I walked up in front of family members I have not seen since my grandmother died and read the following speech. I began to cry, and my voice became distorted and my message could not be carried pat my trembling lips. My father, reliving the memory of losing his mother, came up and took the paper from me. With his emotional wall about to collapse he read my poem. I realized at that moment that he was relaying my feelings better than I could even though he was holding his in. Writing has always been a way for me to express emotions I could not always verbally portray.

“Most people see death as a final thing. I see it as us walking up to meme’s and grampy’s house and looking for them through the top window and not being able to see them. But they can see us and are looking down and watching our lives unfold. We can walk around the house and remember all the times we spent there, but we cannot enter the house yet because we do not have the key. When we finally do get the key and turn the doorknob to enter the house, we will see them sitting in the living room in their chairs and they will ask, “where we’ve been?”.

“People see it as the end, but it is just a long wait. I see it as looking through one-sided glass. They are looking through at you and you are on the other side knowing they are there, but you cannot see them. Each of us are giving a key to the door that unlocks the other side at different times. Till then we must use that glass as a place to display our memories of the people waiting on the other side”.