Sudden eruption of pain,
Darkness all around,
The loss of a child.

The life will never be whole anymore,
Fractured, like a pieces of a puzzle
That a parent desperately tries to put together,
But there is always a missing piece.

For long, long time a mother lives in a limbo,
Life is passing by
With no purpose, no clear understanding
Of what happened,
Why she is still amongst the living?

Desperately trying to crawl out of the darkness and the pain
For the sake of the living children
I find COPE,
With mothers who suffered the same loss,
We all, like an aching, bleeding heart, which beats in unison,
Try to find Hope and Serenity.

Slowly we emerge from that dark place,
Towards the light.
We feel the souls of our children,
They dance around us,
They hold us up,
When we stumble.

We see the butterflies,
We hear the birds sing,
We are alive,
We are the mothers,
Who learn to see and feel our children in a new way

The pain is always present,
But now we live,
We go on,
We support each other,
We reach for the light,
We reach for the life,

We COPE.

In Memory of Julia Zelmanovich
By Helena Zelmanovich.