(no subject)

[chess]

Okay, this is a bit cryptic, being written at the time and for me, and is also *very* depressing. (A little background - afaiaa, Angela wasn't a Christian. This also contains some quotes from/references to the readings at the memorial service.)

Two lonely cakes sit abandoned on the side
The world goes on, and I do too...
But she doesn't.

Nothing is lost, they say, and this is true
I knew her not, would never
Now I can't.

But the reading has it too, and I can't forget
That darkness and corruption are her lot
Gone forever.

It is done- it is late to counsel or to pray
And forget and smile is all I can
And can't do.

I have a picture in my mind
Smiling.

The next room

is an abyss.

Forever.

(A poem for Angela, after the memorial service)

Comments

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

Thanks for writing the poem.

Who was Angela? What happened to her?

(and it's odd how people you hardly knew dying can affect you so deeply...)

[chess]

No, I haven't forgotten to allosaur you - why aren't you on a talker if you're online?

Anyway, Angela was a girl in our year at school, who died of (well, I still don't know, I never found out what the results of the investigation into why were) during last half-term holiday, in her sleep. Naturally, a lot of ppl in the school were and are very very upset about this, but I hardly knew her although I can put a face to the name. It didn't really affect me at the time I first heard about it except for a little bit of numbness and shock mainly 'cos of the mood of the rest of the year, but when I was reading the text of the readings out of the memorial service booklet it suddenly came home to me *how* thoroughly she was gone - not to the 'next room', because the next room for her was an abyss... the other reading had a line saying 'if some vestige of my thoughts remain among the darkness and corruption it would be better to forget and smile than to remember and be sad' or something like that, which also made me think all this.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

Because I'm at work behind a firewall, so I can't spod-- switch on IP logging!

I didn't know the poem (though I've heard bits of it before), but Google tells me it's a sonnet called Remember, by Christina Rossetti. Death is a terrible and sick thing sometimes-- not just when people carefully ignore it and then aren't ready for it when it comes to them... not even just when those who are left behind have lost a part of their lives (small or great), and it's too late to counsel or pray... but also when it happens near them, people can't forget however hard they try that this is going to happen to me as well, sooner than I'd like.

ick. *hugs*

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

that really isn't an answer to what you said, but then i don't know whether i could say anything which would be.

your poem said it just as well as the prose.

[jarel.livejournal.com]

You reminded me of this:

She whispers
"Please remember me
When I am gone from here"
She whispers
"Please remember me
But not with tears...
Remember I was always true
Remember that I always tried
Remember I loved only you
Remember me and smile...
For it's better to forget
Than to remember me
And cry"

The Cure, "Treasure" (from Wild Mood Swings)