While at the Funeral

Give me a hug and say that everything will be alright,
coz what I witnessed were the ashes of a friend 
tossed into the heavens, while I searched for them in the clouds.

Did we fail you? Can we even speak of failure? 
Must there be a fault? 
How else can we understand your actions?

All who breathe shall someday cease to,
but to resolve to end of one’s own life is
an irreversible choice. There is no “whoops!

My mistake, I was not thinking straight.” There is no
restart. 	There is forgetting. 		You
fade from our memories. We move on. Always onwards!

Others take your place, and fiction is made of your life.
You become a lesson on mental health, an example
of why men should open up more about their feelings.

Elegies are not my favourite type of poem for all the reasons that make them beautiful. It is because of what they represent: tragedy, loss, grief and a stockpile of questions. ‘Why so soon and this way, why them, could it not have been prevented?’ At once, our friend, relative, lover – you name it – becomes a memory, and like all memories, fade or shift into obscurity of what we wished had been or what we wish to keep in remembrance. No man is meant to live forever, and some goodbyes are better than others, but a loss is a loss, no less, and the emotions that follow are equally as real.

In the last year, I’ve had the displeasure of writing many of these poems for people I know. With this pandemic, I do not doubt that many of you have experienced this same loss, if not already in your own lifetime. I’ve been hesitant to share them for many reasons, but a friend encouraged me to put some of them out there in hopes that it may also console others who can relate to the displaced emotions that come with grief.