The Healing Journey

October 6,  2025

All I could do was hug her…

By Patricia Martin

This past Labor Day weekend was the annual National and International Beat Poetry Festival, a weekend-long affair (I go Friday evenings and Saturday during the day but skip Saturday evening and Sunday — too many words and too much socializing). People come from all over the country and even some from Europe and overseas, and there are some wonderfully talented voices, nice people and great community vibe, and it’s all very inspiring.

At the event, two people I barely know confided in me about their losses. One told me that last fall, following the death of a close friend who suddenly passed in his wife’s arms while hiking, a month later his wife passed suddenly in his arms. And he’s bounced around living at six different places since then because of the complications in the will and an unsympathetic executor.

Then, another woman I never met before who was helping with hosting, cooking and such for the event, told me she’s recently lost her husband, two sons, and has a sick daughter who’s in the hospital. Such tragedy upon tragedy, and all I could do was offer my condolences and hug her.

(Writer Patricia Martin lives in upstate Connecticut. Her prose and poetry have appeared in many publications, and she is author of “The Right Side of Forty: Celebrating Timeless Women.”)

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