Question Tennis
by the Community
Do I have to?
What if I don't?
How do I continue to face each day without you here?
How did I face each day before you?
Was there anything else I could have done to protect him?
What more could I have given than everything I had?
How are you going to get it out of me?
How could life be so cruel?
Who is to blame?
Who can I blame?
How could I possibly have let it slip my mind that babies die?
How did it never occur to me that my baby could die?
What is my purpose in living now that my baby is dead?
Is there a purpose to living at all?
Did I know?
How could I have known?
Did she know?
How could she have known?
Was she in pain?
How do I live with this pain?
How on earth do I help my children survive this?
How on earth do I help me survive this?
Why?
Why not?
:::
about the piece.
Angie, still life 365's editor, talks about this month's community poem, "If there was a punctuation mark that defined grief, it would be the question mark. So many questions came up for me after I lost my daughter. My first lesson of our loss was that each question just brought up more questions. There is a famous scene in the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead where they play a little question tennis. One question leads to another. Participants were asked to remember questions that came up for them after their loss and during grief. I volleyed back questions in this poem that their questions evoked in me. I think this poem could have been written a thousand ways."
about the contributors.
Contributors by their on-line pseudonym or real life name include: Emily, Brittany, Sally, Beth, Jill, Krissy, Rachel, Jeanette, Amy and Angie
Wow, when you see all those questions together it's so overwhelming. x
ReplyDeleteI got goosebumps reading this -seeing all the questions like that. No wonder babyloss makes us feel as thugh our head might explode.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the others- seeing all the questions together here is so poignant and really strikes a cord.
ReplyDelete"How could I possibly have let it slip my mind that babies die?"
ReplyDeletecouldn't get passed this one...........so basically profound x
Seeing them all makes me realize I asked them all at one point or another, even though I was only to submit one question. Looking forward to further community poems.
ReplyDelete