PICKING UP THE PIECES OF HER CHILDREN'S BROKEN HEARTS

At nine minutes after eight, on a bright November morning, my father stood leaning against the opened driver's side door of our family car, saying goodbye to my mother and his five year old son.  He had parked the car in the lot in front of the building that he worked at, given them each a final kiss goodbye, and then waited for my mother to put her keys in the ignition. A minute later, he lay dying in the middle of Harper Avenue. A driver, either drunk or asleep at the wheel,  lost control of his vehicle and veered wildly off the road into the parking lot; side-swiping our car and hitting my father. The impact was so great that it knocked my father completely out of his shoes, and they remained in the exact spot that he had occupied, just seconds before. His watch stopped at ten minutes after eight. It marked the moment when two families' lives would be forever changed; the driver's family, as well as my own.  My father's injuries were so severe that, despite the best efforts of the paramedics, he died en-route to the hospital. At the age of 29, my mother was now a widow, as well as a single parent. She was the mother of three children and was pregnant with her fourth.  Four months later, my mother and siblings welcomed me into the world, alone.

Somehow my mother persevered.  She picked up the pieces of her children's broken hearts, and fashioned them back together again, despite her own grief.  She filled our lives with music and laughter, and fostered in each of us a love for literature and language; a love that remains with all of us, to this day.   I can picture her, even now, sitting with her back against the wall of our upstairs hallway with a poetry book in hand, as she read to us at bedtime.  We drifted off to sleep, not to the sounds of children's books, but, rather, to the gentle cadence of the words of the poets; a melody as lovely as any lullaby.  I think she did so, not only to comfort us, but to comfort herself, too.  She loved the solace that poems provided, and in turn found even greater solace in writing her own.  In those days no computers or blogs were in existence, so few others but her children and family ever heard her heartfelt words.  She wrote as a way to deal with the tragedy she had endured, and her words are as poignant now as they were when she wrote them, so many years ago.
So here is one of my mother's poems. She wrote it shortly after my father's death.  Perhaps others will find the same comfort in reading it, that my mother gained from writing it. I hope you do.
ALONE
By: Geri Garner
Alone I sit and wonder
I often cry alone
With a heart that's grown bewildered
With the terrible hurt it knows.
But I can't give up and run away
I have to stay and fight
The hardest battle I will ever know
The heartbreak of my life.
I will have to learn as a child again
To put all my trust in God
It won't be easy, but once I do
The rest won't be so hard.
For first comes faith
And then comes hope
And with them a clarity.
To see this life for what it is
And that brings charity.
And then, though my cross is still heavy
It won't weigh me down as before.
For now I have someone to share it with
And I am not all alone anymore.