Author’s Notes: It’s fascinating how someone else’s loss can remind you of your own. We’re very self-absorbed creatures, really. The recent loss of a loved one by someone I know brought back strong emotions from a loss I suffered myself – when I was only eleven years old. I remember it so clearly because it happened in the summer between elementary school and junior high. Dakota Grace Randall wasn’t just a cousin but a best friend. The best friend. So this is just my way of getting some of the pent up sadness that sneaks into my life and maybe a way to reach out to anyone hurting from the death of a love one these days. It hurts but it must always be felt so that we never forget.
DAKOTA
D – D is for the darkness I feel when I think of you on those days when I’m too lost to think straight.
A – And A is for everything that I used love and now hate because you’re gone away, supposedly in a better place.
K – K could be a variety of things but for me it’s just another letter in your beautiful name that I never get to say because I’m always crying instead.
O – Obviously this is for the orphaned feeling I get when I wake up every morning knowing that you are dead and all I have left of you is in my head.
T – T is for Time, but no such thing could ever possibly fix my shattered heart.
A – Again, and again, and again – because I keep waking up and you’re still not here and I’m still falling apart…
GRACE
Grace – there’s no accurate way to describe you.
Gracefully finding a quiet way into everything that I do.
Grace – something that I’ll never have.
Grace – something you took with you than I can never get back.
Grace – a name – a name that is just too painful to say.
RANDALL
R – Really there’s no cure for a loss this big, this early, or this hard.
A – And I’ll never know whether I’ve finished my healing, or if I’m back at the start.
N – “Never say never,” but ‘never’ doesn’t describe – how hard I’m avoiding everything that I keep bottled inside.
D – Darkness that never fades; darkness that lasts for days upon days; darkness that has made a home in the middle of everything that I’ve used to build my life.
A – All I ever wanted was to pretend that I never knew you so that I could never hurt – but pretending you never existed only makes it worse.
L – Love is the only cure.
L – Love is something that I have for someone not of this Earth.
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