I Was Not Ready For You to Leave

You were the words on my every page

The bookmark of our story

The fine leather binding

Of our life, and all its history

 

You were the exclamation points

The commas and semi-colon

Each period at the end of our sentences

And the question marks I depended on.

 

So, when I pick up my pen

And try to write here

Something is sorely missing

Our ink still stains my hand and I try to share.

 

But everything seems to run together

Nothing stops when it should all end

No pauses, when I should rest

No answers to the questions, I’d learned to depend.

 

Tears stain the blank white pages

Where, now, there are no words to read

A book with so many unwritten chapters

Its emptiness, makes life seem so dead.

 

Your precious pen and ink lay beside the empty chapters

Of a book filled before with memories of love

Beginning in our youth, to your final breath

Ending and new beginning are held in heaven above.

 

I was not ready for you to leave

Your pen’s now in my hand

Your faith in me, that I could finish our story

Not alone, you said, but with a God who understands.

 

My humanity begged you to stay

But in my heart I knew,

As you dictated your last words,

That I must learn to write something for you.

 

You placed my hands, though they belonged to you,

Into the hands of our heavenly Father

Asking me to begin penning the punctuation

That day we moved the bookmark, together.

 

It is still there awaiting grief to subside a little

So that white pages stained only with tears

Can hold the memories of our words again

For the hope of today and of the coming years.

 

I write alone in my Fathers strength

His grace and hope now fill my pen

As I write around the stains of grief

And the tears that still fall now and then.

 

You left too soon, but I will carry on

Someday, is a sojourn not a dread

And I will see Jesus standing there

Arm around your shoulder and a crown upon your head.

 

WS.  December 2015

In Chris’s memory