Tag: grief

Taking a Moment…

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It’s late morning, yesterday. I’m catching up on the morning papers, eyes growing heavy…I doze off. What’s better than a late morning nap on a long weekend…in an absolutely silent house.

45 minutes later, my sleep is broken with wet kisses. The puppies are back from their walk with Susan. Sully settles himself on my chest, drops his head and sleeps. Wally watches from the caboose position, not sure what to make of his Brother on his Dad’s chest in his rightful spot.

I watch both of them, and think of the movie Cavalry, loved it btw. Father James shows more grief for the death of his dog than for humans subject to abuse he has witnessed. The punchline of the movie, injects a pause into the routine of the long weekend.

The next thought, and what a leap it was — to this day, Memorial Day — where my wiring somehow, some way connected this sacred day, to those humans that reached out to Yiyun Li after her second son committed suicide. She spoke of the clichés: “I know how you feel.” “It will get easier.” “This too will pass.” Some were certainly most well intentioned. Many, however, were clueless at the level of despair and loss, and the abyss that Li finds herself as her new lifelong habitat. “Life is stubborn. So am I. I have conceded to make this abyss my habitat, every single day, for the rest of my life. But I shall live in this abyss only on my terms.”

I look back at the dogs, both resting now, and their unconditional love, and I flutter back to Yiyun Li.

“There is a gracefulness, when people know what it means to do things that work. A few days after James’s death, my husband and I met Christiane for lunch, and later went to tea at Bonnie’s house. Do things that work meant that we knew they were precisely the people who had the clarity to meet us where we were: they were not there to console us or to fix our problem; only, to spend a moment with us.”

I can’t comprehend the courage that the men and women who died in their Service for this country. Or, the courage of those who Serve our country today. Nor, could I begin to understand the loss that families of the fallen live with every day.

No. I have no consoling words.

I sit. I sit quietly, in their honor, in this moment, and on this day, thinking of their ultimate sacrifice, and my gratitude.

Walking. With a Sign?

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Can you find the Canada Goose in the shot above? I’ll wait until you find it. Yes, there. The speck, bottom right. Hold that thought.

It’s Thursday, 1514 consecutive (almost) days on this morning daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

I step into the park. It’s dark.

I walk.

I’ve had a flurry of chatter around me about Signs.

They see signs in the spotting of Cardinals, Blue Jays, Feathers, Hearts, Sparrows, Robins, and even Moths.

Don’t you see it DK? There!

I’ve grown up. (A little.) I stare quietly, body language not giving anything up, offering a look of contemplation. The thought process having evolved from “are you kidding me, you don’t really believe that, do you? aka George Carlin style: Religion: A Bullshit Story.

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Lightly Child. Lightly.

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Nothing to be done, he thinks, nothing at all. Short-term memory loss is an inevitable part of growing old, and if it’s not forgetting to zip your zipper, it’s marching off to search the house for your reading glasses while you’re holding the glasses in your hand, or going downstairs to accomplish two small tasks, to retrieve a book from the living room and to pour yourself a glass of juice in the kitchen, and then returning to the second floor with the book but not the juice, or the juice but not the book, or else neither one because some third thing has distracted you on the ground floor and you’ve gone back upstairs empty-handed, having forgotten why you went down there in the first place. It’s not that he didn’t do those kinds of things when he was young, or forget the name of this actress or that writer or blank out the name of the secretary of commerce, but the older you become, the more often these things happen to you, and if they begin to happen so often that you barely know where you are anymore and can no longer keep track of yourself in the present, you’re gone, still alive but gone. They used to call it senility. Now the term is dementia, but one way or the other, Baumgartner knows that even if he winds up there in the end, he still has a long way to go. He can still think, and because he can think, he can still write, and while it takes a little longer for him to finish his sentences now, the results are more or less the same. Good.

— Paul Auster, Baumgartner: A Novel (Atlantic Monthly Press, November 7, 2023)

Notes:

  • 50% thru a short book. Man can write.
  • NY Time Book Review by Fiona Maazel, November 6, 2023: “Paul Auster Walks the Long Valley of Grief in a New Novel. In ‘Baumgartner,’ a professor contends with mortality and the haunting memory of his wife.”
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

Lightly Child, Lightly

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Even now,
decades after,
I wash my face with cold water –

Not for discipline,
nor memory,
nor the icy, awakening slap,

but to practice
choosing
to make the unwanted wanted.

—  Jane Hirshfield, “A Cedary Fragrance”

I’ve written many, many poems out of the need to find a way to say yes to what I would, at first, rather say no to. Because our whole lives consist of such moments. Many things will happen to us that we would prefer not. We would prefer our loved ones don’t die. I would prefer the world were more sensible and kind and compassionate. I would prefer there not to be forest fires of such extraordinary devastation as we’ve been having, or fill in the blank.

But a human life requires all of these things. And so to every day begin the day with this simple affirmation of “I will make the unwanted wanted” has been a practice of decades for me now.

— Jane Hirshfield, from an Interview with Ezra Klein in The New York Times, March 3, 2023

Notes:

  • Portrait of Jane Hirshfield by Nick Rozsa in The Marginalian
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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“…that hopeless sense of loss which makes beauty what it is: a distant lone tree against golden heavens; ripples of light on the inner curve of a bridge; a thing quite impossible to capture.”

—  Vladimir Nabokov, Laughter in the Dark (Vintage; February 16, 2011, first published 1932)

Notes:

  • Photo: During yesterday’s Daybreak walk. 33° F. 7:11 to 7:33 am. January 2, 2023. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.  More photos here.
  • Quote via CODA
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”