We Take What We Love Inside

In my writing course this week, we studied a poem by a poet named Li-Young Li. It was about devouring peaches and “taking what we love inside.” When the instructor recited a line from the poem – There are days we live / as if death were nowhere / in the background; from joy / to joy to joy – I immediately thought of Rick and how I never thought it possible to feel joy again after his death. But I do now. Even though he’s been gone for years, it still amazes me that I can feel joy, happiness, and even hope, because those emotions were eclipsed by grief and sorrow for so long.

But I know part of the reason I have a full life now is because so much of his enthusiasm for life still lives inside me. He is not gone. He is here, within me, because as the poem said, “we take what we love inside.” He will be a part of me forever, and he will live through me. Here’s the poem I wrote in response to the lesson’s writing prompt.

REMNANTS

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
– Li-Young Li

I devoured you – heart and soul, mind and spirit
Took in every morsel,
Each savory bit of your essence
Because we take what we love inside

The funny thing about death is
That those remnants of you are still there
They survive, like a blossom of hope
An impossible dream –

That our love remains alive
And you exist through me
Those are days when I live
As if death were nowhere, and you are here

I wondered, for years,
If I’d ever feel jubilance again
Until your adventurous spirit urged me
To spread my wings and fly

Katherine Billings Palmer

About Katherine Billings-Palmer

On August 13, 2017, I lost the love of my life. Rick Palmer and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary one month before he died at age 63 of complications from treatments for small cell lung cancer. He was my partner and soulmate, the love I had been looking for and finally found at age 40.

Rick was a talented writer and web designer and, in 2002, we began our own web and print design business. We worked together building the business and enjoyed traveling, writing, and playing together. Our dream was to spend our golden years together doing more of the same, but in the ten months from diagnosis to death, that dream shattered.

After Rick’s death, I quickly realized that the enormity of his loss was too much for me to handle on my own, so I began grief therapy. I also began writing through my grief in a journal of feelings, thoughts, memories, and poetry. As I navigate my new life alone, I share my journey and my efforts towards creating my “new normal” on my personal blog: The Writing Widow. I’m also on Instagram, Blue Sky, and Facebook.

I've published three books about my grief journey: my poetry book, I Wanted to Grow Old With You: A Widow's First Year of Grief in Poetry, and two books of poetry and prose - A Widow's Words: Grief, Reflection, Prose, and Poetry - The First Year" and A Widow's Words, Year Two: Grief, Reflection, Prose, Poetry, and Hope."

I also published a memoir: "My Story: A Memoir in Poetry and Prose." All my books are available in ebook and print versions on Amazon.com.