holding both the subtraction and the addition

 avoidance

current America has perfected avoidance

of looking death in the eye,

of looking in the eye of those slipping away,

of looking at the lives of those we have lost

with both appreciation of their gifts,

and acknowledgement of their human frailties,

when we see someone who has lost a person close to them,

we sympathize and want to help,

so we say we’re “sorry” 

and can forget to ask how they are,

or to express how wrenched we are, too,

we sympathize and want to help,

to me the “I’m sorry”

sounds like they feel some responsibility for the loss,

and need to be reassured, 

a feeling that somehow the death could have been avoided

if we had but done something differently,

I need the focus to be on the loss,

after I posted this, a friend emailed me a suggestion I like:

"ask for something they treasure in the person they’ve lost,"

it is hard to see a future without the lost one in it, without us in it,

it is hard to see and feel the wrench that a death gives,

I know inside my heart that I will die,

and I avoid any real thinking about it,

that same avoidance of thinking about a future without us,

pushes us to skitter away from dealing with loss:

from feeling both the pain of subtraction from our lives,

and appreciating the addition each life gone has given us.

by Henry H. Walker

November 6, ‘21