PAD 25 = Something Overlooked

Gifts

When he died so many proclaimed
he left you gifts, all you have to do is
find them. I don’t know how they knew
these people who have walked this same
path, knew what I was going through
tried to help. Look for the gifts they’d

say.That infuriated me at first, the only
gift I wanted was my son, his now and his future.
Acceptance is a beautiful thing, its worth the
wait and the fight to get there. You can rest
when you find it and you will after the long
and harrowing journey through grief. Its then

that I found the gifts.. No fear. That doesn’t
sound like a gift at first, but from one who
wouldn’t travel by herself it was colossal.It
gave me the gift of freedom to experience life
to be where I wanted to be, see who I needed to
see, work through grief in my own way. I dreamed

over and over that I could paint. Not just paint
but re-create my son on canvas. I’m not an artist
but the dream re-occurred each night until I bought
the paints and began my project.I painted my son, my son
just the way I saw him in my dream. He won 2nd prize
at a juried art show and I haven’t stopped painting
since.I still can’t paint or draw, but when I get
something in my head, I can’t rest until the vision

is on canvas. I wrote letters to family and friends,
they said they enjoyed them, that I had a gift for
writing. After my son died I couldn’t not write.
It was my lifeline. I bled ink from my veins for years
as I got down what was in my heart. I wrote each
day until it drained me of thought and form. Then
an online writer’s group invited me to join them. I
had never written poetry before but they encouraged me
and I wrote. I’m still at it. Poetry is my therapy,
my catharcise, my joy. The first poem I wrote was
the one I recited at his funeral. Don’t ask me how.
I still don’t know, maybe that was another gift.