Writing Wednesday: Poetry as Therapy

My grandmother passed away recently. She was the only one of my grandparents I ever knew. So though her death was expected because she was 87 and had dementia, it still hit me pretty hard. Harder than I expected.

I woke up in the morning with a voicemail from my mom saying, "Call me..." in a clearly upset voice. And I knew. I called and spoke with my dad, who only had time to confirm my suspicions and hang up. I sat in bed in shock, and then realizing how upset I was pulled out my journal and wrote a poem.

For some reason, I just couldn't get the idea out of my head that she died while my boyfriend and I were making waffles in the middle of the night. We danced to Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen" and were just laughing. All why she passed away. So that's what the poem was about. But the poem ended up turning into a eulogy the more I edited it. And due to distraction, I didn't save each version. So then, when my boyfriend critiqued me on the poem/eulogy, I freaked out. I was so upset that it was bad.

At her funeral, I didn't read it like I originally planned. I couldn't it, the thing had turned to shit. But later, I realized why it fell away into pieces when I edited it.

I'm a fiction and non fiction writer who enjoys writing poetry occasionally. But my poetry is always about personal, meaningful things to me. My poetry writing is therapeutic, its not the same was my fiction or even my non fiction. I almost can't edit it because I write it in a moment of deep emotion and thought. So maybe one day, I'll want to publish a book of my poetry but right now I'm saving my poetry for me. Because I'm only writing it for me.