Welcome. This is the first in a new series called Bloom: A season of grief and gratitude, an unpublished collection of poetry I’ll begin sharing once a week. I hope these poems touch something inside your heart beyond words and weave a tapestry of connection between all of us. 💗
Hello.
Three years ago, on December 23, 2020, my father and my anchor in this world, passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack. I did not know as I drove him to the emergency room that I would be canceling the desert road trip I had planned before Christmas to sit by his side for the next two weeks in the I.C.U.
I did not know then that the fella I’d casually put off meeting until after that road trip would not only not hear from me for the next eight months but eventually become my husband and Noah’s father. Less than a year after my Dad’s death, we reconnected and I fell in love. Still in the throes of grief, a few months later I took a pregnancy test and it was positive.
When I first shared the news, this is what I wrote:
“As someone who turns often to words to help make meaning out of this beautiful, chaotic, world, I admit I am struggling. To name the threshold crossed, the portal entered, how days can move so slow and fast at the same time.
The short of it- we’re engaged. And we’re having a baby boy, due in July.
The long of it- words falter but some that come close to the lived experience: nervous excitement, joy, awe, immense gratitude, steady love, calm knowing, exhaustion, brave trepidation.
To hold space in my heart for intense loss (my Dad) and new life (little one) in the span of less than one year has required stillness. Presence. Quiet. A different sort of processing than I’m used to.
How the unexpected can bring both grief and joy. How a broken heart can also be a bigger heart, one more capable of a love not yet experienced.
It feels vulnerable to share, even now. The delicate blooming, the silent becoming. Part of me still wants to keep it to myself, hold it close, safe. But if love and life are a lot of things, safe isn’t necessarily one of them. And that’s okay. It is worth the risk to feel joy, to let the dew of Spring fall on open mouths, to taste both sweet and sorrow and call it good.”
My heart is still learning how to stretch, how to carry grief and gratitude in the same chest with so much ache and joy.
It’s a story I’ve been trying to tell, an embodied experience I still don’t have the words to express. Thankfully, when ordinary language fails, poetry steps in. I started writing these poems soon after my Dad died as a way to honor his life but also acknowledge my pain.
When I found out I was pregnant, a new layer of grief surfaced. Before, I grieved the memories my Dad and I shared, a past I could no longer return to. Now, I grieve a future I’ll never have. Moments with Noah my Dad will never see, new memories I’m forced to create in his absence.
Bloom is a collection of poems from this season of my life. There are poems about loss, grief, and death. But also poems about hope, joy, and love.
Here are this week’s poems (listen to me read them and share additional background in the recording above).
Daffodil
Your heart is brave, like the daffodils whose frail, yellow petals open long before the threat of winter is gone They know not if frost will return but turn their faces toward sun’s golden rays A harbinger of hope when the nights are still long Your heart did not break from the weight of this world It did not fail from the heaviness of sorrow and grief There was no attack from the inside out These terms misunderstand how acorns become mighty oak How hummingbirds fly, fragile wings beating thousands of miles across sea I know your heart, the sweet fragrance of nectar in Spring how it pushed through dark soil always reaching toward the light Your heart did not stop it did not break it did not fail, it bloomed
Falta
Me haces falta
You are missing
from me
You were
never good
with accents–
couldn’t pronounce
the word baño
to save
your life
But when I
flew to France
for the holidays
to visit my then-boyfriend,
you wrote
an entire
Christmas card
in French, painstakingly
translating your love
in ALL CAPS
sent it in a sealed
envelope and said–
“Daughter, here
are some wool socks
to keep you warm.
“It’s cold near
the North Pole
and I know
you are looking
for the light.”These times can feel unimaginable. Maybe you’ve also experienced a recent loss. Maybe your grief is ancient, held in the marrow of your bones, a physical presence you carry with every step. Maybe you’re yearning to embrace the fullness of being human- in spite of all of it.
We would never lose if we had not first loved.
These poems are for you. This moment is for us. An invitation to hold what cannot be held, together. A portal into a way of being present with the heartbreaking (blooming) experience of being truly alive.
I am so glad you’re here.
Each week, I plan to read a poem and share more about my experience writing it but perhaps more importantly, living it. I hope it will be an offering of solace and witnessing. We’re in this together.
All my love,
Mariah
P.S. Join me next week for another poem? I’ll publish a reading every Wednesday for paying members of Heartbeats (free subscribers will receive a preview).
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Bloom: A season of grief & gratitude