For Jack

This poem and post was originally composed in May 2022 on the edges of Autumn to Winter in the Southern Hemisphere. An overwhelming sense of separation had settled on me. Nearly a year to the day later, we found ourselves watching on as our sweet dachshund Jack suddenly left us within days following a diagnosis of bowel cancer for which we saw no previous signs. Today, I re-post this in memory of Jack – how wonderful he was, and how much in love we were with him and with being his humans.

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Recent years have made us more aware of grief and loss than ever before. Global distress is superimposed on private tragedies; treasured rites of passage are extinguished or marked in solitude. Many of my own friends and family across the waves have lost spouses, children, parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, coworkers, patients, students and teachers, mentors and leaders. I was far away and unable to stand beside, give a hug, listen and comfort, or deliver a meal. My thoughts and prayers linger often on their heartache, and often on the people I have lost – and those I know will soon end their journeys and separate from mine.

If shattering the atom brings destruction, surely breaking love at death would violate every law of the universe.  So where does love go?  What does it become?  What do we become when it changes?  In an earthly sense, I haven’t found the answer.  In the spiritual sense – by methods beyond explanation – love not only lives, but grows.  And though broken, we grow too when we love the living better and find the courage to love again the way we hoped to know forever.

This poem is dedicated to all the people who are still being love in the world, even though they miss their own loved ones so much.

I MADE YOU INTO MOONLIGHT

I made you into moonlight,
So I could see you still,
And feel you softly on my cheek,
In quiet Winter’s chill.

The sound of you so distant,
Your warmth a fading glow,
The final ember sleeping,
Under newly fallen snow.

Though daylight ever shortens,
The hours lengthen on.
I notice not the darkness,
Nor recognize the dawn.

The leaves insist on changing,
The seasons run ahead,
But I remain suspended,
Both the living and the dead.

Determined I walk onward,
A scent upon the wind,
Your echo now my compass,
‘Til footprints merge again.

Hope compels me forward,
The landmarks still I know,
A tiny seed once given,
Now full of life, must grow.

So I made you into moonlight,
I willed you to exist,
And once again be with me,
Like the mountain and the mist.

Exhausted, I gaze skyward,
Where you flew away too soon,
Our love forever Summer;
My memories, the moon.

Amy Dewhurst
Re-dedicated to our Jack, 2012-2023