Poems of bereavement

I've just had a short piece about the poems I posted on this blog, which were inspired by my recent experience of bereavement, published in the Artisans Newsletter from Veritasse.

These poems, which some regular readers of this blog have described as "powerful" and "beautiful", have already proved helpful to others facing bereavement. Written in a confessional style, the pain of waiting for death and the remembrance of the one who has died are two of themes that emerge from the sequence.

As regular readers of this blog know, my father suffered a cardiac arrest following brain surgery and never regained consciousness over the six weeks from that event to his death. In one sense we lost him from the moment he had the cardiac arrest but waited with him for the inevitable end. We experienced the onset of grief while he was physically still with us and prayed for his death to be peaceful and swift. One of the ways in which I coped with the extremes of emotion we felt, as a family and individually, was to write these poems about my experience and to post them on my blog together with information about the inspirational person my father had been. I know that these posts and poems have already been of help to at least one other person in similar circumstances and hope that others will also be able to identify with them.

My father was a pioneer of community work in the UK who, in later life, applied this knowledge and experience in urban ministry. He was a man of commitment and integrity throughout his life and is, without doubt, the person from whom I have learnt the most. It is my hope that through these poems and posts his life and death will continue to inspire and minister to others.

The article was accompanied by The Stature of Waiting and Our Lives Contracted. Both of which can be read in their original contexts by clicking here and here.

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Henryk Górecki - Amen.