Your mind is running
Your mind is full.

Chaos surrounds,
Bright lights exposed.

Demands are made,
Deals to be closed.

Your chest feels tight,
Your throat feels jammed.

Your jaw muscles are tight,
Your shoulders are round.

Christmas cheer is here.
Or so it’s called.

Christmas is a time of closure,
It signals the coming to close of a year.

For many a year filled with happiness and joy, new beginnings, and cheerful laughter,

But for some of us, Christmas is the sign of a year coming to close,
That has left us but a rose,

A quiet still rose on cold pavement,

We’ve been blown away from our original home,
Discarded like an unwanted stone,

We feel cold and alone.
Our true hearts desires not shown.

Our inner fire has been blown, it’s down to a flicker.
Our face shows sadness of the year and what has passed, for some of us sadness fills our heart.

Loss, things have changed, they are no longer the same,
What a shame,

We feel the pain,
It feels like rain, bitter cold has settled in, our throat feels cold and our knuckles are bony.

We wear black, no colour to bare,

Cold stone,
We are discarded and thrown,

For some of us unwanted, for some of us no warm home.

Thrown like a cold unwanted stone,
For some of us no home,

We look across at the table, where someone close, someone warm, someone we loved, is no longer there. It hurts, our chest tightens, our throat fills with pain, it feels ever so hard to hold back the tears, all of our deepest fears, loss, sadness, for those that have gone home. To their resting place they have flown.

For some of us we feel pain, how can I go on, how can I see the sparkle in Christmas, how can I feel the cheer. Because so and so is not here.

I feel your pain; I know you hope to see them once again. I know how hard it is to be left here, when others have flown home, how can we go on.

Chewing food that has no taste as your mouth is full of sadness, emptiness and loss.

For us Christmas cheer seems to go on too long,

I know how much it hurts.
I know cause my chest hurts too.

Because of you, and the empty space you left.

I’m left to consider,
How can I get through this weather?

I’m drowning, I’m kicking, and I’m trying to stay afloat without you.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

It is then I realise, I’d rather be kicking and feeling, struggling and learning, feeling the cold rain on my face, looking across at the empty space.

It’s in that moment I know I will go on,

I hear laughter, its Peggy Sue, oh how she looks like you.

I know its you, I know in that moment, I will see you, and hear you, with her, her smile, oh how she loves Christmas, today she is thinking of all she has, and how great it feels to be alive, to be happy, to feel laughter wriggle up in your belly.

I look around and I know we are all here because of you, we are here for you, for all that you have taught us, and all that you have left behind, within us. The joy, the love, the hope, the cheer, and the warm hugs,

We have each other,

And I know now I still have you, here in this room your spirit lives on.

It is from here I know I am not alone,

You aren’t truly gone.
I was wrong. Your dreams live on.

I laugh too, with Peggy Sue,

It is Now,
I SEE YOU.

With love,
Margaret Moore.