Nine Years or Nine Hundred
by Barbara Koontz Clarihew

Sometimes it seems that nobody understands the pain of losing your child.

"Well," they say, "It's been nine years shouldn't you be over it by now? My parents died (or my cousin - or my dog) and I did my grieving and got over it," they say.

Nine years -
It seems like only yesterday
And I remember the horror:
* The police knocking at the door in the middle of the night
* Making funeral arrangements (funeral arrangements?) for my son * Asking his best friends - boys who were just yesterday playing ball and laughing with him - to be his pallbearers
* That awful empty feeling in the pit of my stomach when the limousine from the funeral home drove up to our house
* Seeing his casket poised above the freshly-dug grave
* Being pulled away from the graveside when the eternity of services was done
* Waking up every morning for weeks and for a blessed split second thinking everything was right with the world, then the reality crashing in that he is dead
* Fumbling my way, somehow, through the days and nights

Yes, my friends, it's been nine years
and still it hurts to say his name
to think what he might have been doing now with his life
to realize what a waste of a young life it was.
So, please, don't expect me to be "over it" or "okay."
Not in nine years
Or in ninety
Or in nine hundred.

Barbara Koontz Clarihew
for Steven Koontz, died June 9, 1979
TCF - Bucksmont Chapter