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We only talked sanely a few times, 
About how he also had a condition like me, 
Although my dad, who was a pharmacist, when James was small wouldn’t say, 
Obvious as it was that he had CF from his cough n' inward-growing finger-nails, 
Dad decided to bypass the issue, medicine to assail. 

I have CP, and needed James’s comfy chair to read, 
It was given to him in misogyny because it was blue, 
About three months before he died he said, 
I could have it, and must convince mum and dad that it was mine;
They were Christians, fundamentalist and strict, 
And so sometimes there was an elephant in the room,
Between me and James, about the physical.

Death is inevitable, but to them it was only a maybe for James, 
When the doctors had said that 14 was the expectation, 
I prepared myself for the worst well before it occurred, 
As an atheist I am, with no qualms or hesitation. 

James wanted for me the best, happiness and friends, 
Wanted me to do my best physically, ‘cos he knew I wanted that too,
But he also suspected that I would grieve for him rightly, 
Not like a sentimental fundamentalist who believes that Jesus is risen, 
But as a steadfast atheist who knows what has been given; 
So he knew to remark on my immediate life without him so as to adjudicate. 

I cherished Christinna Georgina Rossetti’s poem, Remember, 
Long before and for some time after James’s death, 
And quietly held in my heart the loved-one’s good wish, 
Mum used to think that sometimes I was cold as stone, 
But really I'd faced the fact that James was dead and gone. 

Although Rossetti was by no means an atheist, 
Her poem recites the mantra of the bereavement psychologist,  
That to get on with your life as best you can,
Is a right, the partner of grief, and the pathway for your lone self;
In the Bleak Mid-Winter puts Christ as relational to nature,
Instead of pertaining nature to Christ, as it is normally, 
And so we must partake of it within our space and our pasture. 

Rhoda Monihan 


13/09/2015
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