Come this New Year, it will be ten years since my father-in-law passed away.  As the world turns and the days pass by from year to year, my husband and I continue to miss him.  He was a wonderful, caring, and loving man, and words still cannot express how we felt that horrific day that we discovered he had left this world.  My children were still quite young when it all happened.  The only one who somewhat remembers is my oldest, Autumn, who is now thirteen.  The following poem is her commemorative to her grandfather.

TIME  SLIPPED  PAST  ME

Time slipped past me as I
drifted in my sleep
when the sound of weeping
wakens me.

Walking down the hall I watch
as my father crouches
in front of a picture,
tears streaking down his face.

With his hidden mask I’ve
never seen, not once, a tear fall
down his rosy cheeks.  Every tear
cried by him makes a tear of pain run down my face.

With my tears so loud my father turns
and picks me up.  He holds me in his arms.
The words tremble off my father’s tongue
and my heart stops beating.

I understood my father’s cries and wished
I could have said something, but
my heart was as cold as ice and
my mouth couldn’t move.

My tears came down hard like a stormy rainy night
and the moon cried tears
to see my father’s face.
My grandfather had passed away.

I never had the chance to tell
my grandfather that I loved him.
I never got the chance to show him I was proud
to be his granddaughter.  Instead I didn’t talk much.

My grandfather committed suicide
for he hated himself.
He thought he was a bad man and
thought that no one loved him.

As he was being hauled away
his body a statue, I then wanted to hug him;
I then wanted to say,
“I love you.”

I am saddened that now he can’t see who I am.
He just saw what I was–
a mean, sad, shy, little six year old,
whom he thought was beautiful.