For you Karagen

And for me.....

    Finding words to express how we feel after losing Karagen is difficult.  Describing emotions even more so.  We love Karagen yet "I love you" doesn't say enough.  We miss her yet "I miss her" can never describe the feelings that well up when we mention her name....or a memory floats through our minds.....there are no words and there is no comfort close enough to ease the ache.  It simply is impossible.
   Sometimes I ask myself when will I get over this?  Then I realize, I will never get over losing her....I will never get over loving her.  I will live the rest of my life with an ache where there was once the glow of love.  Her unique presence filling my heart with its life and warmth.
    Then to realize that there is few pieces left of the woman I used to be and the life that I used to live.  There is only what remains and that is forever altered.  I have to get to know myself again, re-learn how to live, excepting this "new" me.  Fragile yet strong.  Emotions unpredictable.  Either gushing tears or silently angry or somewhere in between.
    There are no words terrible and awful enough for death.  If there were I'd say them.  I'd rend my clothes and sit in sack cloth and ashes and still would feel no better.  There is no "feeling better".

   Yes it's hard to describe.

Here is a poem we read in our Bereaved Parents Group.  Of all the poems we read this touched me the most.

Jessie's  Karagen's Piece

 

The world's a jigsaw, once I thought,

With each of us a piece to fit,

A predetermined Grand Design

And each of us a part of it.

 

I thought that God must surely have

A blueprint of His final goal,

And all who come into this life

Are meant to play some fated role.

 

But when my little Jessie Karagen died,

It seemed to me but sheer caprice

Where fits a child in God's design

Who never lived to add her piece?

 

How often I walk alone

To still the anguish in my heart,

To ask why God would make a plan

In which my child had no part.

 

One day upon a village square,

I happened by a tiny shop.

What random step had led me there?

What in the window made me stop?

 

It was a quilt, a crazy quilt,

Each brightly colored patch,

A joyful work of art

From scraps you'd think would never match.

 

I looked upon the quilt with awe

To think a thing so oddly fine

Was stitched from fragments never made

To fit anyone's design.

 

I wondered then if God might wish

That in this way His world be built,

Each life a motley-colored scrap

And He the weaver of the quilt.

 

If such be true, I realize,

My child's life, though short it be,

Is yet a joyful, shining patch

In God's eternal tapestry.

 

I looked upon the quilt and saw

A patch that seemed sheer caprice,

So whimsical it made me smile.

I knew it was my Jessie's Karagen's piece.

 

by Robert Brault
 





 

I love you Karagen.  Our family is not complete without you.

 

Forever.  I love you.