Wild Sorrow: Poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer on losing her son and finding her way forward

Life Examined

There may be no greater pain in life than that of losing a child; the gaping hole felt when a young life is abruptly cut short, leaving parents to deal with a void that can be difficult to comprehend, and a journey to make sense of the heartache that follows.

For poet Rosemerry Wahtula Trommer, the pain is palpable and the grief — the kind of grief only a mother can know — remains unwavering . Tragically, her son Finn took his own life just before reaching his 17th birthday. In the wake of this unimaginable tragedy, Trommer found herself irrevocably changed; it was through the power of words and poetry that she began to find solace amid her sorrow.

Despite the lasting grief in her heart, Trommer is also profoundly grateful to her son. “He my teacher. How much that boy taught me all the things I didn't want to know. I never wanted to learn that things couldn't be fixed. I never wanted to learn that I couldn't be perfect, that I couldn't make the world the way I wanted it. And he taught me again and again and again, how to say yes to the world as it is.”

Reflecting on how she now sees the world, Trommer is struck by “the sweetness and the bitterness, the joy and the grief, the love and the loss and how, as humans, this is what we're asked to meet over and over and over.”

Grief, Trommer says, demonstrates a powerful paradox. It’s central to who we are as humans. It’s “ever mysterious and ever changing and so deeply sorrowful and so profoundly loving,” at the same time.

“Maybe this is the thing that's most exciting for me right now – is this sense of not believing anymore that we're supposed to be happy. That in fact, some of the most profound, wonderful life-affirming, moments have been so difficult.”

“Meeting Your Death”
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Because there are no clear instructions,
I follow what rises up in me to do.
I fall deeper into love with you.
I look at old pictures.
I don’t look at old pictures.
I talk about you. I say nothing.
I walk. I sit. I lie in the grass
and let the earth hold me.
I lie on the sidewalk, dissolve
into sky. I cry. I don’t cry.
I ask the world to help me stay open.
I ask again, please, let me feel it all.
I fall deeper in love with the people
still living. I fall deeper in love
with the world that is left—
this world with its spring
and its war and its mornings,
this world with its fruits
that ripen and rot and reseed,
this world that insists
we keep our eyes wide,
this world that opens
when our eyes are closed.
Because there are no clear instructions,
I learn to turn toward the love that is here,
though sometimes what is here is what’s not.
There are infinite ways to do this right.
That is the only way.

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