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You Would’ve Been by Stephanie J. DeMartino You would have been 70 had you lived today I would have bought you cake and came over to say Happy Birthday Dad, you’ve come a long way! You would have smiled at me and said something funny Told me I looked just like my Mother and called […]
Continue ReadingGrief Poem 124 Dayenu by R.L. Nona If we had been given one more year to watch the sun set on the far mountains, float on our backs in salt ponds shaded by ancient willows that protest the weight of their leaves, and hold each other close as the seasons cycle. First in the […]
Continue ReadingDear Larry, I was really touched by the latest email on grief, the one with Eric Clapton and his son Connor who died aged four years old. How hard that must have been and no doubt still is. You asked for people to respond with poems, suggestions so here goes. In recent years I’ve taken […]
Continue Reading‘I tried to heal myself’: Grieving Eric Clapton, 72, lived as a recluse in Antigua for a year after his son Conor, four, suffered a fatal 53-story fall from New York skyscraper. He was left distraught when his four-year-old son Conor fell to his death from the 53rd floor of a New York skyscraper in […]
Continue Reading[Editor’s Note: in honor of Black History Month, AfterTalk will be devoting this month’s AfterTalk Inspirationals to grieving in the African-American community] A Bronzeville Mother Loiters In Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon – Poem by Gwendolyn Brooks The murder of Emmett Till in 1955, and the subsequent acquittal of his murderers and public […]
Continue ReadingWhen Great Souls Die [Editor: this is an excerpt from a poem entitled “When Great Trees Fall”] When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken. Great […]
Continue Reading[Editor’s Note: in honor of Black History Month, AfterTalk will be devoting this month’s AfterTalk Inspirationals to grieving in the African-American community] A Grief Observed From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin, the power and pain of black mourning. BY MYCHAL DENZEL SMITH June 22, 2017 Mamie Till-Mobley wrote her memoir, Death of Innocence: The Story of the […]
Continue ReadingJessica Crisman and Ryan Ronne were both experiencing the darkest moments of their lives in the summer of 2010. Jessica’s husband of 10 years, Jason Crisman, took his final breath after battling an aggressive brain tumor for 10 years in Grand Rapids, Michigan leaving behind his wife and four children under the age of seven. […]
Continue ReadingFrom My Life, My Love, My Legacy by Coretta Scott King. Confronting death We had talked about it, joked about it, prayed about it. He had prepared me, but when death actually arrived, the feeling of separation was overwhelming. Our bedroom was filled with emptiness. My nights were lonely. In church, the preachers often said […]
Continue ReadingWhat Martin Luther King’s Daughter Has to Say About Grief by Lynda Cheldelin Fell She was just 5-years-old when her famous daddy, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. Thanks in part to the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of the young Bernice King on her mother’s lap, most are familiar with that story. Yet a recent New York Times article about […]
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