Leaving
When you watch someone die, especially a slow cancer death, it’s hard to know what to feel when you look at them, knowing this could be the last time you see them alive. Anger, guilt, hunger/desperation, shame…
This piece is about 17 years old, since it was written the year I lost my grandma – the closest member of my family – to cancer. I was a freshman in high school.
Leaving belongs to the following groups:
All Things Poetic, Artistic, PhilosophicalIf I look at you and cry,
Do not cry with me.
It is I who holds the guilt.
If I look at you and stare,
Do not look away.
I need to hold on to this memory.
If I look at you and become angry,
Do not be afraid.
I can’t help but hate your leaving.
If I can’t look at you at all,
Do not be ashamed.
It is I who am the weaker one.
Jessica Tremp
sorry about your loss…
JaneH
I do like this, the complex conflicting emotions when some-one you love dies- but also the dying. It is harder for the ones still living sometimes? I lost my grandma many years ago and one thing I felt so stringly at her funeral was she’s gone but I’m still here, why?? And I had a great aunt who was also dear to me and just before she died she had a bad stroke and I amd still ashamed to this day that I couldn’t look at her – she seemed so different, yet it was just the dying that made me so afraid… Wonderful poem.