The Comforters

She died last summer, severing many years
of pleasant marriage ties that held them near
to one another until death pulled her away
and left him struggling almost every day.

How could he mend the tear and close the gap
unseen by those who've never felt the tap
of life's goodbye on the window of the soul...
who've never tried to round a fraction to a whole?

His help came not from dark and distant hills,
but from the Maker of those mounds who fills
the lonesome valleys with His light and love
sent freely from His vantage point above

to bless the mourners through His Spirit and
His Word, by kindness of a loving band
of family knit to him through ties of blood
and blessed bonds of spiritual brotherhood.

He found another source of comfort in old
and sometimes faded photos, mines of gold
in sepia tones, all stashed away in books
of picture albums, boxes, and in nooks

that would surprise him as he searched to bring
the past back to the present...not to cling
to portraits of what seemed were better days,
but also to remember: nothing stays,

except the love that made them man and wife,
which saw them through and blessed their life,
then took her to a place far more sublime,
is also his until the end of time.

Written by my dad, Ken Roller, November 2008, in honor of my mom, Connie, who passed away in July. A year of firsts without the love of his life.