In Memorium-- Anelisa Diane Dillion

Friday, March 1st my daughter would have been 27. Not a day goes by I don't think of all the things we missed out on together.

Each year gets easier, as Puneeta and I discus at our annual memorial, laughter, and tears lunch. But the whole experience seems like it was yesterday.

Writing about loss is hard to express at times, and hearing about it can be hard to swallow, but it is something we should all share-- part of the healing process.


How To Survive A Loss


Yes, I lost a child, but not at the mall, or on the playground
full of bustling playmates, and certainly not losing sight
of who they were when puberty hit. You know when the music
is turned up ten octaves louder and the whole neighborhood
can hear. When they would tie up the home phone, before
cell phones and conversations could be monitored more closely.
Months after my child’s spirit left the body and began roaming our house
an insomnia out of the body experience still seems fresh for me;
I turn on the computer, use their password to see if anyone wants
to talk (longer story), and discover a whole other side of them. Thoughts
cross my mind-- if they had lived, would my world be more intolerable. Fighting
off fear seems to be the worst part of grieving. A living child, surviving, has
to deal with parents who watch their every move, and with kid gloves.
How does a parent survive? It is an off button switch that was removed
when they made this model of the human experience.



The flu hit our house this past week. This was the last poem I wrote, and maybe the last for a month, as I will be in Boston at AWP conference. I will be back in a few weeks.

Also, just to let  you all know, I am taking this site down soon, and I have started another blog dedicated to my writing, a bio site of sorts with my poetry links and etc:  Elizabeth Akin Stelling (photo above is me playing around with an idea...)