Confirming Forgiveness

Light in Snow

I saw her
In the living room
Before I
Heard she died.
Wipe away the guilt and gloom.
Go with peace inside.

Text: Linked to Debbie Roth’s Forgiving Fridays and dVerse Poetics where Amaya is hosting featuring the shadorma poetry form.

Photos: “Light in Snow”, above, “Snow Up Close”, below.

Snow Up Close

Author: Frank Hubeny

I enjoy walking, poetry and short prose as well as taking pictures with my phone.

103 thoughts on “Confirming Forgiveness”

  3. It’s good the speaker got to talk to her first. I love the last lines,”go with peace inside,” very wise. Say those important words you need to tell your loved ones!

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  5. Whoa, so much mystery in these six lines, Frank. I like how the reader doesn’t really know who is seeking forgiveness, “you” or “her”, but that there is peace knowing forgiveness has been attained among the two.

    Liked by 3 people

  8. When I was writing mine in the back of my mind I thought, “I wonder if Frank will rhyme this,” and you did. Lol! I felt a tug to rhyme mine but didn’t. Until you, I didn’t know any poets who rhymed as much as I do. I look forward to your work.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. This was my aunt whom I saw, but only once. Two other members of my extended family admitted they saw relatives after they died. Five times is a real blessing. I wasn’t scared seeing her. It was comforting.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I thought so too and he wasn’t see-through. Each time was a difference place and he was doing something he always did. Like an echo in time (I like to think.) This was fresh after his passing too. Later I had a vivid dream where he came to me and I couldn’t ask him anything but he told me he was happy and fine where he was. We were walking in our backyard where all the grass was very green and colors sharp. After that, it was over. My X saw my dad once too when he was with me when I saw him in his car. All very interesting and I do believe it but wonder was a ghost, or was it my mind sorting through his death? They say a person can make another see what they are. I guess hard to chat about it here but I’m not surprised you witnessed it too.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. No I haven’t yet and you don’t know the half of it. He was murdered in his own home with his own handgun. The story is very intense. I haven’t even written about it on my fiction site. Thank you for the link I’ll check it out.

            Liked by 1 person

  17. Wow, Frank, did this really happen? Thank you for sharing this poem for #ForgivingFridays. I felt such a release and letting go of loved ones as I read, and the immense peace that comes with moving on from this world. Ultimate forgiveness all the way around. It felt like a confirmation and reassurance all at the same time. I’ll share your post for Forgiving Fridays tomorrow – it’s an honor. 🙂 Blessings, Debbie

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  26. Pingback: Today’s Forgiving Fridays: Ask Debbie & A Mini Vacation! – ForgivingConnects

  36. i sat there silently a few weeks before
    my Mother Died as she exclaimed.. her son
    is Demon Possessed for he no longer uses
    semi-colons or periods when he writes..
    For Before she Loved it
    and now
    suddenly
    all i wrote was
    evil.. as any demon
    will bring to even poetry
    of soul abyss Black
    It’s True Love
    never
    need
    be Forgiven
    For Love Unconditional
    Who Never Leaves a Home of
    Warm that seed she planted in me
    so Tall and Strong that Wheat of Love
    who sat there calm considering the fact
    that something was truly wrong that had
    nothing to do with her Soul or me.. the Force
    of Love in never
    having
    to say
    i apologize
    For the Love Watered
    And Fed so Strong that it
    refuses to leave even after everyone leaves
    A Tree of LoVE alone.. to spread a root of LiFE..
    It’s True that Brain Cancer was not too strong for her
    to forgive the
    next week
    A Devil Her
    Cancer saw in me..:)

    Liked by 1 person

  39. When my grandma stayed with me almost at the end of her life, i felt my grandfather’s presence hovering in the evenings. Love your photos almost as much as your poetry.

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      1. Grandpa’d been dead more than 40 years, but I walked the land he’d managed for more than 30, took out the last of his osage orange hedge posts. I suspect I absorbed Grandpa molecules as I grew up.

        Liked by 1 person

  40. I was only nine when he died, but I’m sure we both left gazillions of molecules in our blood and sweat on those 480 acres. I had to sell it last summer. That was a heartbreaker.

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    1. We sold a family farm some years ago. I still miss it. May your future be blessed. The story of your grandparents may be worth writing either as a memoir or as the basis for a fictional novel.

      Like

      1. Already written, Frank, and published within a longer family memoir. I called it Threshold because our families are the threshold we cross into a larger world. I’m writing my parents as a trilogy of related novels.

        Liked by 1 person

  42. Frank, this is very touching. And immediately relevant to me. I am trying to forgive a number of people who have done some very hurtful things and have for years. Perhaps forgiveness is the first step for personal peace: they don’t care about my forgiveness. And I must say that to forgive them is the first step in forgetting them. That distance must be gotten. Sometimes forgiveness has different aspects.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. It is not easy and I have not succeeded at it. All of this is a reminder, mainly for myself, that the end of the journey is still ahead, attainable (I hope), and the journey is worth continuing. Thank you, Jane!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. You are welcome, Frank. I struggle with this every day. My mother is a seriously impaired person, with a serious personality disorder. She attacks (emotionally) and is emotionally sadistic. After a life time of this behavior towards people, there is no ‘cure’. Malignant narcissists refuse to see what they do. Their wiring is too twisted, and they are comfortable with their behavior. It gets the results they crave.. I tried No Contact for years (the victims of this kind of behavior are seriously hurt and the wounds don’t close easily) and frankly, I didn’t realize that she was using the same thing. LOL! So, though I am not Jewish, the theology of Judaism includes this: if a person doesn’t ask for forgiveness, it should not be offered. Sounds reasonable, but the after burn still is there. So, I forgive her (and siblings) for what they have become so I can forget them. So I can end my hope that they will change in their behavior. My son, in his early 20’s said this: Mom, you don’t want to remember her: you want to forget her. She has given you a PTSD and that is a life time ‘gift’. I think he is very wise.

        The older I get the more I see that for some people they are entrenched. But in general, and not in this specific case, the issue of forgiveness is one of the most important principles to spread around. It is a cornerstone of our humanity and civilization.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I agree with your son. Forgetting is the goal. I also agree with you about not offering someone forgiveness who does not ask for it. I didn’t realize that was part of Jewish theology. It makes sense. Prior to them asking, should that ever in some unlikely event happen, we need to be ready, protecting ourselves on one hand and preparing ourselves to forgive on the other. That is all the forgiveness I am striving for–just be ready at any time to be able to forgive should the opportunity ever arise. It is like being ready for death. Who knows when death will ask us for forgiveness?

          There have been times when I don’t think I could forgive someone should they ask for it and then all of a sudden, without any effort on my part, that changes. What happens is I no longer care. It is getting to that state of not caring so I can breathe freely again that I yearn for.

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          1. You have a very good and deep understanding of this difficult issue: forgiveness. And especially when we all of a sudden, without any effort, give it. I don’t think it is always an issue of ‘we don’t care anymore’….but something else that enables us to forgive… I don’t know what that is, but it is much more than apathy. Apathy is close to violence in a very strange way. Getting to that state of not caring so we can breathe freely again is the point of it all I believe. And the Jews got it right the first time. Very different than that Christian turning the other cheek and forgiving everything.

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        2. I don’t know how it happens and when I am not in the mood to forgive I don’t think it is possible at all. And then, perhaps because I am just too tired of the emotional drain involved in the negativity, it leaves. It is not something I think I did, but I am glad it happens.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Yep, I understand. same thing here. I think I just get tired of the fight. and fighting is so draining. I’d rather eat cake! LOL! But you have raised some really important points about this issue, Frank. Thank you.

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