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A Person from My Past - Remembering a Life


Finding a married name I'd long misplaced, I searched for her.  That led to learning she had an additional name I hadn't known, a partner she may have divorced, children, and that she died many years ago.  

Poem-making helps me express what I feel.  Right now, that feeling is loss...a fresh one to me, even though it is an old loss in age.  Her father, a lovely man, could probably not bear the loss of his only child.  He followed her the following year.  Another loss to mourn and be saddened that I didn't know of sooner.  

Turning the pages of that found and tattered address book, there were more names of people who are gone, those I've lost touch with over the years, and those I don't know any longer and maybe really didn't know at all.

I'm thinking of all those names representing separate branches of my personal tree of life, so-to-speak.  Some are strong and unfailing, others are growing stronger but groan or even break in blistering winds, others may be so young and tender that when trimmed they grow-back with altered characteristics, some bud but never grow, and others don't receive enough nourishment and ultimately die and fall away.  

In tending my tree, the poem seems to relate best to the last two.  

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