A POEM BY R. STEPHEN
I thought I saw you once
Blindsided by your inviting wave
Do you visit your mother often?
Another time I was walking down the long hospital corridor
Emotions boiling
There you were
Your warm smile; your eyes fixed on mine
How do you get to these places?
It’s too long to walk
I don’t believe you drive a car or pedal a bicycle
You must catch the number 6 bus into town
How foolish of me
I talk to you
A part of you lives in a small cracked photo frame
I catch your eye and ask you why you’re laughing
I’m trying to sooth the baby
These interactions do lift me
We should talk more
Life can be a struggle
The ups can never reach the highs of yesterday
I tell myself that I am guided by you
Am I using your memory to harness my own inner strength?
It’s preposterous when you think about it
That must be it
You are alive
You’re alive in me
That’s where you went
I have fostered a taste for malt since I last saw you
Is that you?
I wonder what it’s like for you, sharing one body
It’s still dark in here
I’m sure I’m still alone
I sense you near me
That’s what I tell myself, anyway
I’ve become accustomed to pretending you are walking by my side
That’s all
Pretending
I tell myself you are looking over my shoulder, watching me write
Do I put down the pen and simply talk to you?
You’re right there after all
What do you think of my words? Nonsense
Maybe that is you after all
I heard your voice one time
I was waking from a deep sleep
The best sleep for an age
You spoke to me
It was you
There is no doubting that
You sounded happy, at peace
Should I have said something in response?
My days are different now
I once had drive, ambition
My yearn to hear you say “I’m proud”
You took that zeal with you
I’m different now
You may not recognise me when you visit again
I feel disgrace
I get things wrong
I guess I always will
What do my sheepish thoughts say, you might ask
I shame you still
That thought at least keeps me humble, in spite of the absurdity
I plan things to say
Stories to tell you
I hear a joke I can’t wait to repeat to you
Deep inside there is a small light burning
This light somehow says: “we will be together again”
I’ve cried
Especially in the early days
I cry for myself
Maybe I cry for others
I can’t be crying for you
Can I?
You’re gone
You’re not feeling
Therefore I cannot be crying for you
I play your favourite songs
Usually after one too many
I feel closer to you
Music can take you back to a place, a memory
It can bring you back in the room, with me
I like to think you are there singing along
Now, there’s a thought
It’s a funny old thing; grief
Are you in heaven?
Purgatory?
Paradise?
Valhalla even?
What do you do for eternity?
I’ll join you there soon
I wonder what we do when I get there
In my head you’re watching over us all
That doesn’t sound like heaven to me
Eternity is a long time
Ancestor after ancestor as far as the eye can see
Just… watching
And now you’ve joined the crowd
I can see you all now, seated in a great auditorium
It’s me that’s the star of the show
I’ll try not disappoint
Perhaps you returned, and now you’ve moved on again
There must be so much to see and do
Who can blame you?
Maybe eternity is like an infinite number of rooms in a house
I have no faith
Faith is an invention to help us grieve
I tried believing for a time
I think I did believe
You would say that we’re all just atoms
I would agree
Here I am, talking to you
I have faith
You are too big a person to just disappear
Are we ever truly gone?
I wonder what we are
I wonder what we really are
What is a soul?
Do you understand that now?
Your body is no more
You didn’t just disappear
Whatever you are or you were, you are still alive
I wouldn’t be talking to myself now
That would be madness
It’s a funny old thing; grief
About This Poem
Where Did You Go?: Grief Spoken Without Polishing the Edges
I wrote Where Did You Go? during the rawest period of losing my Dad to MND. It remains unedited because it was never meant to be crafted. It was meant to be released. The poem is long, wandering, repetitive in places, contradictory in others, and that is exactly why it matters. It was the first time I allowed myself to put the full shape of my grief on paper. I did not just lose a dad. I lost a friend, a confidant, someone whose humour and presence shaped my everyday life.
The poem moves through imagined sightings, conversations, questions, arguments, confessions and moments of quiet disbelief. It tries to understand where he has gone, how he could appear in memory so vividly, how he could feel present even when I knew he was not. It leans into the absurdity of grief. The pretending, the bargaining, the humour, the shame, the longing, the philosophical spirals, the imagined cosmologies, the auditorium of ancestors, the infinite rooms of eternity. None of it is tidy because grief is not tidy.
There are moments of honesty that cut through. The fear of disappointing him. The ache of wanting to tell him jokes. The comfort of hearing his voice in a half dream. The strange companionship of music. The admission that I have no faith yet still cannot accept that someone so big could simply disappear. The poem ends where it began, with the acknowledgement that grief is a funny old thing. Not because it is humorous, but because it refuses to behave.
This piece is not about answers. It is about staying with the questions long enough to breathe again.
One response to “Where Did You Go?”
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[…] dad, Steve. I found myself writing long pieces; one of which is also published on this site: ‘Where Did You Go?‘.As this piece is so long, an entirely unedited, I took sections from this poem and re-wrote […]
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