Poetry: "She Is Silent Now"

Here is another one of my poems that I have been writing to memorialize some of the remarkable people I have the privilege of meeting through my work as a Hospice Chaplain. In that work, we often meet people who at one time in their lives were vivacious and very engaged with everyone around them. Sometimes, as time and disease overtake these precious ones, they are no longer the person they used to be. This is sad, but by recounting their lives, it can become a point of celebration of their lives as we once knew them.


She Is Silent Now…


She was a talker…
Almost non-stop
When she spoke
She laughed

A social gadfly
Everyone’s friend
Kind words
Given freely

She talked about life
She talked about dreams
She talked about the future
She talked about weddings

Looking at pictures
Of social events
Where she talked a lot
She is silent now

But her echo
Is heard in the
Things she touched
She is silent now

A smile
Catches a lone tear
She talked once
She is silent now





Richard D Harris
10/24/2009

We run into people who we knew years ago, remembered by a single defining character trait. Now things are different, and we choose to remember the best in this soul now changed forever by time and human frailty. We celebrate them in the sadness of remembrance.