Over the funeral days I was looked after by the Fahys. When I returned my Da and Ma were sitting in the living room stock still like a tableau of sorrow personified. Seeing their terrible grief I started crying and my Da cuddled me to him and basically told me this poem of how all the ages of her came to him...how all the times she was resonated like a tuning fork..now a child...now the young woman she was becoming. I cried and cried into him and his tears cried all over me. He stroked my curls and told me; "But you are still my little boy and have to be loved!" And by God he did....day after day for the rest of his life he somehow stashed his sorrow away somewhere....kept moving it from place to place in his mind until he had run out of places and started the terrible process all over again so that he could still let his love flow through. I watched him do it day after day....second by second....and....it was an immense task that had no ending. It was the most terrible and magnificent thing I ever saw another human being do. And my Da was always always that great love no matter what terrible pain he was going through himself. It was like climbing an Everest of Pain morning by morning. No parent should see their child die..it is too sharp a sorrow to have to bear.

They said the stars shine the brightest at night,
But what if the world looks like the sun,
And you're a tiny invisible star?

Surely night will fall,
But not on your side.

I'm all about finding depth and complexity in the barest simplicity, but sometimes there isn't any. Sometimes there doesn't need to be.