Jet

I had a post. It was all about how we'd failed to get pregnant this month and how I was so devastated, depressed, discouraged... I thought of posting it yesterday, on the four month anniversary of William's death... but I couldn't look at my blog, at his face, couldn't face my own pain yesterday... I felt so lost and alone in it, so disconnected from it all.

And then something happened. Something to pull me up short, shake me to the core, make me realize it's so not all about me all the time. My own little world is nothing, nothing.

The suffering and pain and cruelness of this world goes on and it affects all of us, every minute, every bit of human pain anywhere, every person drawing their last breath, everything, all of it connected, one long human chain of suffering and love and heartache and joy. My world, my pain, it's yours, and yours mine. I am not alone; you are me and I am you. A butterfly flies on this side of the world, and a baby dies on the other. We are one aching, blood-red beating heart, one magnificent ocean, each wave beginning, cresting, being reabsorbed...

I am sitting here alone but feeling the hearts of every woman who has lost the potential of knowing her baby, every life taken, and oh not just the babies but the heartache and horror of those dying in tortured silence, those twisted remains of war, those taken too soon and those taken without warning... and the pain of those left behind to live with the empty space... the veil is thin but it is impenatrable.

I am remembering one life, one brief, beautiful life.

Jethro (Jet) Craig Wilhelm

I wrote this poem for you, little man, and for your mama and your daddy who miss and love you so very, very much. I spent the morning reading every single comment left on your mommy and daddy's blog - all the love, so much love, pouring out of the hearts of strangers - and yet we are not, none of us, strangers - at the tragedy of your passing from this world into the next.

I read and I sobbed and ached and I took the words from those comments, and I wrote this poem using only the words that had already been expressed by hearts cracked open by your going. Because there are no new words, little one - we are all floundering in our attempt to express our love, our pain, our sorrow.

My small tribute to a beautiful, brilliant light, gone out too soon. I wish I could do, give, more.

In memory of Jethro (Jet) Craig Wilhelm

August 29-September 1, 2009

Swirling love holding you, precious,
this birth defied the impossible loss
of Freya, Kees, two silent hearts
and then

another

tragic hush -
a son hijacked -
a heavy day, an outrage.

My heart is weeping.

My sister is broken open in
a gutted black hole of love.

How can she carry this
burning torment
shaking, stumbling,
life lost, children silent?

The force of love
can't unwind time
with magic words.

Jet flies free
over the streets,
the rooftops -
light passing light -
we cannot
touch the void.

But...
We remember.
We love.
Always.