Debbi

For years you stood by my side
Supporting me far and wide
I basked in your strength of heart
Safe in the knowledge that we were never far apart

Yet now you have left me all alone
You have deserted me, gone far from home
Why did you leave at the most inopportune of times?
I lie now broken, alone and left behind

Daughter now dry your tears
And know you have nothing to fear
I never left you, my spirit dwells within
Protecting you always from danger and sin

That I can no longer hug and kiss you is true
Memories of our time together remain forever inside you
You have learned all my lessons, my job is now done
It is up to you to move on without me for now, my beloved one

Know that my feelings for you always will remain
I watch over you now from a higher plane
Amongst the clouds in the skies above
There is no power stronger than your mother’s love.

© Jared Denstad

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Back in July of this year, my sister in law’s mother (Debbi) passed away of cancer. I was concerned about all the emotions I knew she was likely going through at the time, and so I set about trying to write something to attempt to either ease her pain or give her some sort of closure.

After writing what you see above and sending it to my brother to pass along to her, I quickly started getting comments from them both about how much they enjoyed it. This quickly led to them pushing me to publish any other writings I had already written. So you could say that it is this poem which is responsible for the vast majority of the other work I have already posted.

In regards to what I was thinking when I was writing this particular piece: I had just received the news of Debbi’s death and knew I wanted to write something to help my sister in law cope with her loss. Knowing this, I faced a couple of major hurdles to overcome. The first was my lack of experience when it came to writing poetry at the time, having only written a handful of poems before. The second was my relative unfamiliarity with Debbi herself. I only met her maybe five or six times before she passed, and so I had to overcome a rather tall barrier in that regard.

In the end, I chose to focus on two things that were obvious even to people with a casual relationship to Debbi: Her inner strength, and her love for her daughter. After choosing the focus I came upon the idea of focusing the poem on what I believe a conversation between Debbi and her daughter would be like if it were possible for the deceased to communicate with the living. That is why the poem starts out with the daughter crying out, almost cursing her mother for leaving her behind. It is meant to reflect the emotions I believe Debbi’s daughter was facing at the time, and try to give what I thought would be the kind of response Debbi would give to her daughter should she be able to.

In addition to being my first poem about another real life person, this also marked the first appearance of my five stanza, twenty line setup that I now use for the majority of my work. I did this as a way to force myself to get as creative as I could in a limited amount of space. While I could have kept writing for several more stanzas, it likely would have diluted the message I was going for. Will I ever start writing longer poems? Probably, but only if the topic warrants it.

I would like to thank my sister in law for permitting me to publish this poem. This is by far one of my favorites that I have written so far. If you enjoyed this poem, feel free to check out the rest of my work on Medium and consider following me so you don’t miss out on any future content. I hope you all have a wonderful day and I will see you all next time.