Often when I laugh
at something funny
either on TV
or book
or conversation,
I pause and feel
guilty that
after your death,
my dear one,
my son,
that humour
could still rear
its head
and cause
my laughter,
as if my laughing
was a kind
of betrayal
of my grief
or a hint
of forgetting you
or a watering down
of the pain I feel.
But it is not,
no less pain is there,
the grief still bites
as strong,
its teeth still sharp
as shark's jaws,
and as for
forgetting you,
my son,
more chance
of forgetting
self or my
own image wiped
from memory's hold.
Laughter's medicine
cannot dull
grief's ache or pain
or bring you
back again,
but it permits
a moment or
two or so
for me to close
my eyes or mind
and let it flow
in a calmer sea,
when there was you
alive and well
and happier me.
ON LAUGHING AFTER THE LOSS OF A SON.