Grief

Was it ever okay for me to grieve?
To grieve
my brother
dying

14 months old,
while my mum was
pregnant with me.
To grieve
my mum dying
with a baby on the way in her womb
when I was three years old.

My first memories:
"Please do not beat me!"
My smaller version says that very clearly.
"Please do not beat me!"

How can you
beat

a three year old,
whose mother just died,
beat him for crying?

How much more beastly
can humans get?
How much more ghastly
can human behavior get?

I wonder,
and finally
I can allow
all that grief,
let myself feel it.
Hold myself with the grief and the despair of the three year old
that did have an environment
where it was not safe
to grieve

the lost mother.

************************************************

 Have I ever mourned for myself?

The lost opportunities,
the un-lived decades,
spent in life's waiting room,
somewhere between the living
and the dead.

The self-hatred
and self-disgust
that are the more or less inevitable results
of a broken life
in a society
which values performance
above all else.

Can I mourn for myself?
For the lost years,
the accumulated misery,
the terrible loneliness,
the unfulfilled longings.

Can I let the tears come?
Can I hold myself in my misery
with all the pain and the sweetness
that this embrace entails?