Semicolons Important Punctuation

Life is beautiful;
semicolons help give pause
to collect one’s breath

Good afternoon. I am sure most of my readers are aware of the two celebrity suicides recently. Did you know June is PTSD awareness month? And September is suicide prevention month. As my family has had to deal with suicides, I learned many family and friends touched by suicide create hope through semicolons; a semicolon shows there is more to a sentence. It does not end prematurely.

The end of November this year, it will be 5 years since my brother-in-law ended his life. Only a year later we lost one of my cousins to suicide – Swallowed Whole. And with extra media coverage on suicides when it happens to a celebrity, suicide rates have been known to increase. So take a breath, pause and reach out; if you feel depressed, find someone to talk to life is beautiful.

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#NaPoWriMo 2018 Day Twenty-Four

Arizona Police Association Facebook Page

Three and a half years
first responders given help
Craig Tiger Act passed

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our prompt (optional, as always). Today, we’d like to challenge you to write an elegy – a poem typically written in honor or memory of someone dead. But we’d like to challenge you to write an elegy that has a hopefulness to it. Need inspiration? You might look at W.H. Auden’s elegy for Yeats, which ends on a note suggesting that the great poet’s work will live on, inspiring others in years to come. Or perhaps this elegy by Mary Jo Bang, where the sadness is shot through with a sense of forgiveness on both sides.

Good Evening and welcome to day twenty-four of #NaPoWriMo. I’m not very good at elegies, but while I was on Facebook tonight I saw the Arizona house bill offering first responders help for PTSD passed yesterday. It was named after my cousin who committed suicide in November 2014 a year after my brother-in-law committed suicide and less than 3 months after my mom passed away. As the Arizona Police Association post states, the hope is this bill will prevent another first responder from facing PTSD alone.

Swallowed Whole

The end of this month marks one year since the loss of my brother-in-law. Then a month later, my cousin, Ken, passed away.  We were traveling to El Paso that day to spend time with Nonnie (my mother-in-law) while the girls were on winter break.  This August my mom passed away.  She had gone through pictures and set them aside for each of us sisters. In my batch, I found a Thanksgiving picture of the Hosking/Dougherty clans (my twin’s family).

Thanksgiving 2001

It is now up on the kitchen cabinet for this Thanksgiving. And this past weekend we were hit with another tragedy as we’ve lost another cousin.  I posted a picture of him and my twin and me on Facebook for throwback Thursday.

Me, Craig, Katryn
Summer 1990

News of suicide
hit hard by reality
tears open my heart

Plummet in despair
Black swallows all radiance
Snuffing out your light

Despondent reach out
Distance felt between us grows
Death cannot be breached

It’s been a very rough year.  I appreciate everyone’s thoughts and prayers.