Talking about grief

As someone who’s lost both parents to cancer (my father at 79, my mother at 71) I know a little bit about grief. Here’s a poem that talks about the grief I went through after my father’s losing battle with lung cancer, and his death several years ago. I truly felt like an orphan after he died, but somehow I managed to get through it:

Grief Talking

I got through the day

on Xanax and chocolate ice cream sandwiches,

my thoughts whirling,

putting one foot in front of another,

haltingly.

In spite of everything,

I got up and continued on.

I noticed the yellow Mexican marigolds,

bushy from long neglect,

outside my bedroom window,

still turning their faces

upwards for the steady hot-beamed sun.