2023 SOL with FMF: 3 REACH

My reach is not long enough to get to you. Nor yours to me. Yet somehow you are always near.

No matter how much I long to hear your voice, it will always only be within my dreams that it will come to me.

Your no-nonsense advice continues to cycle through my mind yet it is just not the same. Or enough.

I hear you in the voices of my children whom you have never met. Somehow you have been able to reach them.

There are days I can almost feel your presence and for the tiniest moment I forget that I cannot reach out to you for whatever need I long to be fulfilled.

What did we do to deserve this long life without you? And you without us? I logically know it was nothing but I still cannot help to feel that it is a punishment.

If only I could have another few minutes to replace the haunting ones that live in my memory. There are some things that you just cannot shake and those last words are among them. Do the others know what I know?

For now, I will reach for my children and know that just as they are a piece of me, they are a piece of you. That can comfort me when you cannot. And all the little pieces of them will help to make me whole.

I am writing for the 16th annual Slice of Life challenge presented by Two Writing Teachers.
I am participating in FIVE MINUTE FRIDAY. Today’s word is reach. The rules are simple. Write for five minutes flare. There is not extreme editing; no worrying about perfect grammar, font, punctuation. It is unscripted. Unedited. Real.

23 Comments

  7. Oh Kar, this stings. The thought of you “reaching” for her just takes my breath away for a minute. Not fair. She deserved to be here and you deserved to have your mom see you as a mom for starts. She would have been so proud of you and omg, I can imagine your crew crawling all over her and what a gorgeous image! Love you. Loved her. Strangely, I just replied to a comment you made alluding to dream I had that she was in last night. Maybe she’s checking in with the fam? She was loud in my dream; felt accurate to childhood memories. She’ll always be loud in my head, or dry-humored, kind of mubbly about whatever was going on at the time, always with a smoke in her hand, and I love that. Makes me sad but I do love remembering her vividly when I can.

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  8. To some far, far place you’ve gone,
    out of time and out of reach,
    and I know I must go on,
    but as I stand upon the beach
    where the small and sad waves break
    at the shore that you have crossed,
    I don’t know if I can take
    the weight of all the joy I’ve lost.
    I see you nightly in my dreams,
    catch glimpses when I quickly turn,
    but in the passing days it seems
    that I’m being shaped to yearn
    for that golden promised place
    where once again, I’ll see your face.

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  11. Do you ever feel like you are living a life without your loved ones? That you are somehow punishing yourselves for having been given a long life? I know it’s hard to understand, but it’s something we have to live with. We didn’t do anything to deserve it. We just lucked out.

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