Category Archives: death is part of life

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Volunteer

I wrote this thinking about the increasing number of homeless because of housing costs and that incomes aren’t keeping up. And even if the income has kept up, a lay-off and an illness can put people so far behind that they can end up homeless. In Denmark, they rent rooms to students in nursing homes. Part of the payment is that they have to spend time with some residents. When will we set that up here?

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Volunteer

A man I know slides into kidney failure.
He’s already there when I meet him,
care for him
for a number of years.
He’s a really nice man.
Over time a bit more disheveled
unkempt
dialysis twice a week.
Even so, once on dialysis,
people die younger
than the rest of us.
Over time he is in and out of the nursing home.
loses touch with friends,
in the home so much
that even when he isn’t there
he goes there
and volunteers.
They have become his family and home.
At last he is so tired
he stops dialysis
and goes to the nursing home for the last time.
The staff call me, crying.
“He is hurting,” they say, “Do something.”
He can’t swallow.
I see him and place a fentenyl patch.
He mostly sleeps then
but is no longer in pain
He dies a few days later.
I haven’t seen this before:
The nursing home staff cry
for this man
this volunteer
this friend
and I do too.

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One reason that he did well at the nursing home was that they understood how frail he was and that he couldn’t do very much. They gave him very gentle volunteer jobs and enjoyed his company. Sometimes when people are very frail or ill, others avoid them or just do not understand.

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Water vessel

This is a brazen water vessel that belonged to my grandparents. My maternal grandmother was born in Turkey, because her parents were Congregationalist missionaries to Turkey, my great grandfather running Anatolia College. They were escorted to the border in 1915, when my grandmother was 16 years old. Thrown out.

I have a picture of my mother, dressed in a Turkish outfit, with it on her shoulder. I wish I had more of the story!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: brazen.

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Betty Boop

I love this rose! Now I have to be very careful to close the front gate or the deer will come in and eat every flower and bud.

And tomato leaves are poisonous, but the deer do not seem to care. I left this in the back yard for one night and the deer have eaten nearly every leaf!

For Cee’s Flower of the Day. And in memory of all of our dead.

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Daily Evil: L is for Longing

Is longing evil? I don’t know. Rumi writes that all longing is longing for being reunited with the Beloved and is a form of prayer. I think that is gorgeous.

L is also for Lake. This is a 9 by 12 inch watercolor, dated 1991. I don’t know the title. This is Lake Matinenda in Ontario, north of Michigan. My grandparents bought land there and we went up in the summers year after year. I have not been there since 2018 because of Covid and distance. I do know that stretch of shoreline.

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Keep

The older we get, the more we learn
which bridges to cross, which bridges to burn.

What shall I keep?
And shall I burn that bridge before I cross it
or after?
I did not know that was a bridge
I would burn
And I grieve as a I learn
But the sledgehammers and bombs
loosed by the family
have left a bridge
that is all but falling
Into an abyss.
It is stone and old.
It won’t burn, but it barely holds together.
One heavy rock, thrown in the middle
and it will fall
down down down.
What shall I keep?
What shall I let go?

I wonder what my parents think
and grandparents
and sister.
Do they think at all
or do they let go with death
and let joy overcome them
in reunion with the Beloved.
I hope where they are is joy.
It is ok, loves.
It did not turn out well
but people make their choices.
I can’t rebuild the bridge alone
and on the other side they prepare new IEDs to blow me up
if I attempt to rebuild
or cross.

I keep my children away
from the web of triangulation
and so they are not attached to the land
nor do they play the family games.
I am so glad.
I am still attached to the land
and my dead.
Not the living but the dead.
My sister, my mother, my father
grandparents, uncles, aunt.
All the dead.
Forgive me, but I can’t keep the bridge
going
and I will let the land go.
My children and I will be dead
to those living.
We have family and friends
who are loving and not hating
and not cruel.

I still love my dead
and even though the place reminds me of them,
they are not there.
They are in my heart.
I keep them safe
and let the bridge
and the land
go.

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: keep.

My sister is paddling the canoe. I took the photograph, in about 1980.

And here is music:

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Hunted

I am having an internal argument.

It’s about shacks on a lake in Ontario. My grandparents and family built the shacks and I’ve been going there since I was under a year old.

However, my sister died of cancer in 2012 and there was a horrific family battle over my niece. My mother had already died. My father died 13 months after my sister and left the same will as my mother. Unfortunately it was written when I was a minor. I cried when I read it because I was the only person named in it who was still alive. I knew what my father wanted, or remembered what he told me. A will is a will though. I took it to an attorney and followed her interpretation.

Then I was sued by family regarding the niece.

I knew what my father wanted but he had not done it. So I decided not to fight it and handed over half the estate. Because even though my father wanted me to watch over his granddaughter, he had not left me the tools. And she did not want me.

So back to the shacks. It’s the side of the family that brought in all the lawsuits. I have not felt welcomed there nor loved since my sister died.

Part of me is furious that I am being hunted out, unwelcomed, wants our grandparents to curse them.

The other part points out that I have already been hunted out, effectively. I stopped trying to take my children there because I couldn’t tell who in the family was “neutral” (basically not talking to me) or “gossiping” — the rumors re me trying to harm my niece were incredibly painful. I had to let her go.

After my father died I dream that I am issued a huge SUV, black. I am to go pick up three children. When I arrive, two are teens: my two. The third is a toddler. My niece is really the same age as my daughter, but not in the dream. In the dream, they tell me, “You can’t take the toddler. You don’t have a car seat.”

I say, “Can I go get one and come back?”

“No.” they say.

I say, “Please, can I borrow one? I didn’t know I needed it! I was issued the SUV!”

“No.” they say. “You can only take the two teens.

So I took the two teens and left, crying.

I woke up and thought: my father’s will is not my fault. I did the best I could. I followed an attorney’s advice and I tried to do what my father wished. I did not have the tools I needed.

Now my children and I may get an offer to buy our share of the land. My children are ready to be bought out.

I do not know if I am. I feel like this is the last connection with that side of my family, not only the living, but the dead. I love the land far more than the silent living and the cruel living. Why are families so cruel and why do they need enemies so badly? Gossip is a sin, truly, and hurts. Selling my share is saying goodbye to my sister, my mother, my father, my grandmother, my grandfather, my two uncles, my aunt. I don’t mind saying goodbye to the cruel living nearly as much as to my dead.

And that too makes me sad.

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Unfiltered

An old friend died this morning. She was a college friend of my parents and has known me since birth. I will miss her quite terribly.

She and I took a road trip in September. She had lost thirty pounds, not on purpose. I thought I had better do the road trip while we could. We went from Michigan to visit five households of old friends in Wisconsin. I lived with her and her family for a year during college in Madison, Wisconsin in the early 1980s. She is a beloved mentor.

She also introduced me to all sorts of groups. She has an amazing record collection.

I went with her to see Warren Zevon in Madison.

The painting is my photograph of one of her oil paintings. It is about 3 by 5 feet and gorgeous.

Dona nobis pacem and much love.

For the Ragtag Daily Post: filter.

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I think of you as dead

I think of you as dead.
Love is not dead, not mine for you.
This is not respectful to those
truly dead. Yet you are dead to me
in that you lie and say forever.
Torched and ashes, now it’s never
and the real you is dead to me.
I love the you that made a different choice,
that loved me back. He holds my hand
and walks with me and laughs with me
daily. And there is nothing you can do
to stop him and me. If anyone asks, you are dead
to me, dead forever, and I will love
whoever my heart chooses, for all time.

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I found the chalcedony nodule on Indian Island yesterday.

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mad bad sad

I am not good at stopping loving people, because I kept losing people as a very small child. I wanted to be loved and have people stay. So how to deal with people who leave now? Well, I talk to my dead in my head all the time, so if I think of the person as dead, then I can just continue on. The friendship is certainly dead, love or not.

I am also thinking about poetry forms. I am enjoying writing sonnets, but after all, I’ve written limericks and haiku for years. Not to mention enjoying the brilliant rhymes of Dr. Suess.

mad bad sad

You are dead and I am glad
It makes me sad that I am glad
that you are dead you make me mad
when you are bad and make me sad
as well as mad you sad bad dad
not my dad who was bad as well
except when good as I can tell
bad angels fell but there’s no hell
hells angels tell that heaven’s swell
and you are dead and I am glad
it makes me sad that I am glad
that you are dead makes me so mad
you were bad and made me sad
as well as mad you sad dead dad

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Yammer

You’ve joined my silent dead: doesn’t matter
whether you speak or not. You’d like this song
and be jealous of the skills. I yammer
to my dead, the number rising strong.
At sixty I declare that I am middle aged
Mom dies at sixty-one which feels unfair.
My sister dies at forty-nine, cancer rage.
I watched them both as chemo takes their hair.
You too are dead no words across the breach.
I yammer to you daily in my head.
Agates gleam, treasure on the beach.
You refuse to look, I mourn that you act dead.
You sit stubborn in a rocking chair alone.
You don’t believe your dead will call you home.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: yammer.