Written for dVerse Poetics: Picking Up The Pieces
where today we are sharing grief. This is my haibun.
Tomorrow will be 4 months since my husbandβs identical twin brother died suddenly. His wife returned home from a walk and found him on the bedroom floor; she said he was still warm. The news felt like an arrow ripped through our hearts. Jim was dead. How was my sister-in-law ever again going to walk into her bedroom without picturing her husbandβs body? How was my husband Bill going to face the rest of his life as the lone twin? At one time there were three brothers; now there is only Bill. This is the most difficult trial for him. My husband lost a piece of himself that day. We are numb, disbelieving, questioning, dazed, numb, numb, so unbelievably numb.
You know how people say that time flies? Not when it comes to Jim; time has stopped for us. Logically we know heβs dead but our hearts cannot accept it. Itβs unbelievable, inconceivable for us. It doesnβt feel possible. We function normally every day, do the same old crap, talk and eat and laugh. We watch movies, go shopping, pay bills, gab on the phone, babysit. We live the same lives we lived before Jim died except heβs not here to share them and we cannot wrap our heads around that. It just doesn’t feel like he’s dead. He should be here. It’s not right that heβs not here. It’s like someone has played the cruelest joke on us.
Now, when my sister-in-law looks at Bill, itβs Jimβs face she sees. And sometimes when I look at my husband, I see Jim and I find myself pondering why Jim was the twin who was taken.
I am Bill’s wife but Jim was his other half.
save them in your heart
golden summer memories
for when winter comes
No idea who’s who!
NARΒ©2024
This is βComfortably Numbβ by Pink Floyd
All text, graphics and videos are copyright for The Sicilian Storyteller, The Elephantβs Trunk and The Rhythm Section and are not to be used without permission. NARΒ©2017-present.
The Elephant's Trunk 