Poetry and grief--writing The Last Time I Saw You

D. Eric Bookhardt, the last time I saw him (photo by Diane Elayne Dees)

In 2019, I entered a chapbook contest that involved contemporaneous writing, but--no matter how hard I tried (or didn't try)--I coudn't come up with a theme. I was also about to go to Charleston to cover a tennis tournament, and once I arrived there, I realized that I was just under too much stress and could not possibly think of a theme. I forfeited my entry fee and withdrew from the contest.

The next year, we were all under lockdown because of Covid, so I thought that it would be much easier for me to formulate a theme and write my poems. But it wasn't. I considered withdrawing again, but then I received the news that a close, almost life-long friend had died--and there was my theme.

In my other two chapbooks (one of which still hasn't been published because--after much time had passed--I had to give up on a dreadfully unprofessional publisher and start all over), I wrote a mix of formal poetry and free verse. But this time, there was no time for me to construct any formal poems. My long-term memory isn't that great, and so I wondered how many poems I could write. But despite these restrictions, I made up my mind to meld my grief with my desire to honor my friend, and to just write. 

The result is The Last Time I saw You. I didn't win the contest, but the chapbook was quickly picked up by Finishing Line Press.

Writing The Last Time I Saw You turned out to be a kind of shorthand methodology for grieving. I was sad, yes--very. But I was also angry--Eric was a victim of careless physicians who misdiagnosed him. And I was also carrying anger because of a conflict within the relationship that had not been resolved. 

I relaxed into the project, and memories appeared, along with enough detail for me to be able to create poetry. It was no surprise that some of my own issues rose to the surface because--obviously, grief has a way of bringing everything to the surface--but also, I was able to examine those issues through the mirror of Eric's life and philosophy. It was not an easy project.

Losing a close friend--whether through death, abandonment, or conflict--is devastating. And the cognitive "knowing" that someone is going to die, some day, is not the same as the gut-level knowing that someone is gone from this world for good. One of the things that I learned from writing these poems is that I wasn't as generous as I should have been in expressing to Eric my appreciation of and admiration for him. (To be fair, this wasn't just because of my own negligence--Eric liked to keep things casual and sardonic.)

Writing the poems also kept the loss right in front of me, making it harder for me to distract myself from my feelings about it. For me, writing is always the best way to express, understand and manage my feelings, and writing poetry just adds another level of creativity and efficiency. 

You can read a sample poem from  The Last Time I Saw You here.