Memory Eternal (my wings part two)

All day I played Wings Part Two on repeat

I didn’t want to hear anything else

Just tears poured out whenever I imagined

You were the light and the way they only read about

I didn’t start the day expecting it to become this way 

I left the post office and opened your purse

I hadn’t seen your face since I was nineteen

And now all I could see was your smile

I wish I had seen it in person since then

I remember it, but from too long ago

I wish I had just one more glance

Or better yet, one hug and kiss

And one for Alison, my angel, too

And one for Jadon, Eden, and Gaius

Or better yet, to spend a whole day with all of us together

To welcome you into my own home

To share a meal or two together

To hear your voice resound

To gaze at your smile next to me

To even cry together

I’m sure there would have been lots of tears

I would have been there holding you in my arms 

But I wasn’t ever given that chance

A son can dream, can’t he? 

I miss you so much

And yet I don’t even know the you in the driver’s license 

Other than what my teenage self last recollected

I’m so happy to have received your little notebook though

I immediately recalled your distinctive cursive handwriting 

It didn’t change a bit over the last two decades

Maybe my strong opinions about cursive need to change

And your faith in the Lord didn’t change either

I can imagine a certain someone still asking, “What faith?”

Forget about him

His faith only has a dozen followers

But yours has the hosts of heaven 

“Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord

To what end is it for you?

The day of the Lord is darkness, and not light

Read verses twenty one and twenty two

God himself is saying these verses!”

I didn’t want to read anything else

Just tears poured out whenever I considered

You were the light and the way they only read about

I couldn’t leave the post office 

I stayed parked far beyond my fifteen minute sign limit

Just weeping and praying

More weeping than praying though

Eventually I went to work and didn’t accomplish much

Because I was thinking about your smile and your cursive notes

What an incredible sight to behold

Such a sincere and childlike faith

Not even the most severe tempests of life could loosen your grip

“Hate the evil, and love the good

And establish judgment in the gate

It may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph

The prudent shall keep silence in that time

For it is an evil time”

You held on to the very end through an evil time

Which began when he divorced you for another

I wasn’t in a good place to know any better at that time

So please forgive me

And recovery without you was much needed

But now that nearly two decades have passed

All I could recall from him was the mantra

You were to blame, not him

You ruined everything

He needed a secretary

You were demon possessed 

You were the problem

He needed a virtuous wife and never had one

You abandoned him

You were not merely ill

Because illness wasn’t a just enough ground for him

Yet from what the Sheriff mentioned over the phone

According to others in Aberdeen, you were still known to be mentally ill

And in ways just like I remember you being

But that simple, sincere smile of yours still catches me off guard

And your handwritten notes still overwhelm me 

You remained filled with the faith of a child all these years

“Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live

And so the Lord the God of hosts shall be with you”

Yet I had no way of knowing this sincere faith of yours all these years

Because you were nowhere to be found

You were remembered as the self proclaimed victim and martyr, abandoned and unloved

And no one taught us how to consider some validity to that

Tears just pour out because I now realize

You were the light and the way they only read about