“HeartSpun Talk from the Crucible of Experience”©
From the life of Ken Matthies - Author, Poet, Real Life Storyteller
This was a poem written in still dreaded anticipation of the third anniversary of her death due to arrive once again on the following day. It would in fact turn out to be a landmark day in my healing process as I finally allowed myself to remember and experience its full effects on me for the very first time, in order to finally be able to give outlet to those deep feelings of grief still trapped within me.
Anniversary Memories
I’m feeling the bite of the pain again
And the emotions that memories bring;
Of a daughter who died just three years ago
And the songs that her spirit would sing.
Anniversary times are tough at best,
When worlds will again collide;
To bring back the news of the fateful day
That she flew her last gallant ride.
A spirit so strong and so full of life
Should not have been snuffed out so young;
That’s the cry of my father’s heart
For her songs that remain unsung.
I can hardly believe the depth of the hurt
That still drives its knife to my heart;
That finds me rocking from side to side
As the memories flow to a start.
The tears and the anguish still burn a hole
Into the physical shell of my bones;
To accompany the ache that drives down deep,
And the sound of my heartfelt moans.
I cry from my heart in a broken voice
To tell her how I miss her still;
And I know that as long as I’m able to breathe
That my spirit and soul always will.
These are the memories that all parents face
Who have lost their kids to the sky;
As they try to heal and find a new life
Built around that one question… Why?
For those with faith – and for sure I’m one,
The only ease for my pain;
Is to know that she’s living a whole different life
In a dimension that exists to her gain.
Still it’s the human experience I’m left with here
On this plane of existence I live;
Where the memories and pain of her going away
Are seeping through cracks like a sieve.
And I can’t stop the tears or the rocking hurt
That comes back to haunt me today;
As I think of my girl and her sweet birdsong voice
And the pain her death brought my way.
Though I know as I weep and shuffle the cards
Of memory that pass through my mind;
I’ve been blessed to have had such a wonderful child
And a love so eternally kind.
So I’ve come to accept the answer to “Why?”
Though my humanity still pays the price;
Of the memories that roll around once a year
And her fateful throw of the dice.
I’ve come to an answer in the depths of my faith,
Where I know she’s not really dead;
But that she’s living a new life in a spiritual place
Between the pages of a book yet unread.
And as much as I miss her and hurt here today
I know it’s not the end of our trail;
I’ll open that book up myself one day
And read it in her heavenly vale.
So as the pain and memories flow like a tide
Through the channels of this father’s soul;
I’ll cry with the hurt but remember the gain
As I live, and wait to be whole.
I Love You Leila
Always and Beyond Forever
Dad
August 7, 2005
© M. Kenneth Matthies
For almost forty years of his life Ken Matthies has been a writer and chronicler of life expressed in poetic form, following the family tradition laid down by his grandfather before him.
Faced with the dramatically life altering experience of his helicopter pilot daughter’s sudden death in 2002 he has grown to also become a literary author of true events based on his own life. Though grief opened his literary doors it is the Light of Love and Memories supplying the fuel of inspiration to write through them.
As a second-chance dad given the opportunity to verbally share his life stories with his newly rediscovered daughter it was she who told him that she believed him to be a ‘worthy man’ after having heard them, and who encouraged him that they should be shared in written form beyond her own life – not yet knowing as she said it that she was soon to leave him behind. As a bereaved father and writer learning how to live life again in the Light of his own Love and Memories of his daughter, he writes those stories now as a testament to her belief and faith in their value.
His full length book entitled "How to Survive the Death of a Child - A Father's Story of Healing Light" was the first of these stories which he wrote in the Light of those Love and Memories.
He lives in the solitude and grandeur of a tiny southern Yukon village with his Tlingit native wife Skoehoeteen and the successor to their venerable old Tahltan bear dog Clancy Underfoot, who now happily awaits them at the Rainbow Bridge in Doggy Heaven. She’s a new female puppy named Hlinukts Seew which means ‘Sweet Rain’ in the Tlingit language, a wonderful phonetic variation in memory of Clancy’s name who was also called C.U. for short. It’s a good place to tell those stories from.
You can read more of Ken's writings and find his Amazon Kindle book at www.kenmatthies.com.