jarv
August 29, 1998
well it always
seems to me a day with you can
be a month and still it can be a month
where we can live a lifetime.
Why do the days seem so impossible
to overcome now?
why can’t someone learn
the answers to these questions
and why can’t someone solve
the mysteries of the day?
sometimes I wish that life would be easier
Why can’t the simple answers be the answers
for some people like me?
months make time disappear
when you seem to disappear
from my thoughts, from my sight
and then someone has to go and remind me
and all my thoughts of you come rushing back
I don’t know where you go while you’re gone
and I don’t know why I’m forced to remember you
and I don’t know what to do with all these questions
that no one can answer for me
no one seems to have the answers
I’ve been looking for
So should I stop looking
How many times will I be forced to remember
the past, my saying good-bye to you,
my forgetting you, which seems to have happened
so many years and thoughts ago
I wish you
could know a fraction of the thoughts that have been
in my head, since your death, since mine
I keep wondering when my life will start, who will
protect me from all my bad dreams. The dreams
keep coming to me, just so you know
Not that you’d have
any of the ideas that have gone through my head about
the world, or the dreams about you, or about me
That’s something I’m just
supposed to forget
like magic
I wish that getting an answer from you would be
as easy as getting an answer from anyone
I’ve wanted to tell you for so
many minutes, so many months, so many years, that
I still miss you. I’m sure that doesn’t sound like the
truth when i try to tell you, but I mean it.
My sister brought me
one of your paintings. I remember a blue
background, not a red one,
until my memory crept up on me again.
I wish I knew how you felt. About me. I wish about
things like that, at times. I wish
but I’ve had strange
thoughts like that in my lifetime
This is my life now, just so you know, Just
so you can get a glimpse of what my life is like now.
sometimes I wonder if there’s just no sense in the world.
I mean, is that all there is to it? Is someone just
pulling one big joke on me,
pulling their hands over my eyes? When is everything
supposed to just get better and have a happy ending?
Every once in a while I see a painting that you did and I
think of you and I still feel sad
I wonder when the pain will go away, when I
will eventually just forget you and that will be the end
of it. Well, that hasn’t come yet. I’m still waiting for
that day.
I had the whole image in my head: I was in the hospital recovering from
surgery and the only way for you to visit me there would be through
the cars that I can see out my window.
And you came to the door and got rid of my family
that would have recognized you and would have said,
“hey, he’s alive. Somebody stop him!” But my whole family wasn’t
around, not in my little dream that I pictured, and
you came, and my doctors were mad and I was almost unconscious
and you tried to talk to me. And I tried to make sense in my head out of
what you were saying, and I kept asking you if you were alive.
That was all I could come up with to say
to you on such short notice. And
you kept asking me “what”, and still wanted me to
never give you the right answer, the answer to whatever
you were asking. I wanted the answers I had for
you to just come spilling out of my mouth.
I wish the answers wouldn’t come as easily as the truths do.
I think back to all of the good-byes we should have had, and
I think about all of the hellos we also should have had. I still
don’t have the answers, but I DO have my thoughts and I still
usually miss you. And I think of you while I’m in that house
that aches in pain, with good and evil, that’s what I get
on a bad day, the house which holds all of my clothing now.
With all of those demons that just won’t go away.
I wanted to tell you so much over the years. I wanted to let you
know that, even if you never hear it or even if you never believe it,
there has always been a part of me
and there will always be a part of me
however little you want to believe it
there will always be a
part of me that will always love you. That seems like such a shallow
thing to say, that seems like such a shallow thing to repeat. But I
guess I said it. So there it is. I know you loved me. Maybe
when you were alive I just didn’t know any better. Maybe I just
wanted to always be right. That could have been it.
I know you deserved so much more than me. Most people did.
Sometimes the answers didn’t come to me, and sometimes I didn’t know
what to tell you at the times when you needed it most. I wish I could
fill in all of the gaps that were missing from my less-than-perfect education.
I needed to learn. And so did you, I suppose. And maybe we can one day
forgive each other, and maybe even teach each other a thing or two one day.
I’ll still always be sorry to you, just so you know. I hope
this is enough of an apology. I’ll tell you I’m sorry later. Forgive me.
Maybe one day I’ll see you again and we can make this all work out
somehow. I hope so. Let’s reserve a date for it. We’ll call it a time
when we’re supposed to get together. I’m marking the date. You do the same.
Remember it.
Remember the date, and thank you for nothing, and thank you for everything.
I’ll see you soon.
Copyright Janet Kuypers.
All rights reserved. No material
may be reprinted without express permission.
|
