after the geese have flown
Category Archives: loss
copyright
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: copyright.
This is my sister being a goofball on Christmas morning in 2010. The puppet was a family gift that we all played with. The Christmas hat is mine. This was after her cancer recurred: she died in March of 2012.
My sister wrote on line. She wrote at everything2.com and a blog: http://e2grundoon.blogspot.com/.
After she died, the people who write on everything2 were notified that another blogger had stolen multiple write ups and posted them on a blog as their own writing. That is a violation of copyright. And it feels particularly painful when it is my sister’s writing, who is dead at 49 from cancer. I do not think nice thoughts about the thief and I hope that the person regrets and makes penance for what they did. Hundreds of write ups were stolen from all sorts of people.
That is what the word copyright brings up. Don’t steal. Don’t steal my work or photographs or my sister’s or anyone else’s….
sky
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: slapdash. I can’t think of a photograph of something I want to call slapdash. It feels judgemental today, unless it’s something of mine, and that feels vulnerable. And then I start thinking about the sky…..
sky
Is this a careless sky?
Were the angels in a hurry when they painted it?
Did the clouds come out as heaven wanted?
There is nothing slapdash about the sky.
Container dream
I dream I am at a concert in a park. Or some very big event. With my significant other. It is a beautiful day, the sun is shining, the grass is green, there are rolling hills and trees. People are arriving.
There is a gasp of horror. There is a large box, like the hold of a ship. We hurry to look in: there are three open containers down inside, tops removed. They are full of children. Smuggled? Immigrants? The containers are surrounded by water. My significant other and I drop our things and climb down the long hold ladder into the water, which is cold, filthy, and comes up to my thighs. I’ve kicked off my sandals. We are wading to the containers. An ICE agent in a black uniform, bullet proof vest, belt with tools and guns, and riot helmet, blocks me and says, “You have to be wearing shoes to help.” He is handing out plastic stretchers. He can’t see my feet. Yes, I know it’s dangerous and my feet could get cut, but this is probably sewage and dangerous even with shoes. We should really be in hazmat gear but the kids could be dying. I just look at him, silent, and he hands me a stretcher.
Enough people have come forward, into the water, that all the kids have been placed in one of the containers. None of them are dead. They are being lifted out one by one, to ambulances. Now the hold is surrounded by rubberneckers. I climb out and find my purse and camera and shoes. I am grateful no opportunist has stolen them. The ICE agents are telling people to back off and give them room to work. The news crews are there and a Washington State politician says, “This is Washington State, we will take care of these children, we will not see them separated and incarcerated, I will see that they are returned to their parents.” Good luck, I think, but at least there are tons of witnesses and cameras and news crews.
I need to find somewhere to scrub my legs down with soap and to find my significant other. It’s getting more crowded.
I wake up.
And what I notice is that the water did not stink and was not full of lumps of floating excrement. As I wake I hope that I won’t catch something horrible and die….usually my dreams have full sound, color and smells too. I wonder where the children were from, and why, and whether they had some sort of sanitation….
hold on
Taken from a canoe in 2012.
Ms Boa signifies
Ms. Boa looks the way I have felt this week. And hearing that Aretha Franklin died, I think this expresses my mood.
This is for the Ragtag Daily Prompt: respect. Respect for loss, grief, and cat knowledge too.
Princess Mittens, the cat on the left, is gone. One day she was in the living room, sitting under the vent and staring up at it. I finally paid attention and realized why.
There was a bat in the vent. I could see claws. Ms. Boa became very interested too.
We did get the bat out, by opening the windows upstairs and the vent. Keeping the cats downstairs.
Ms. Boa was sad when our other cat was killed by a car.
Thank you so much for the music, Aretha Franklin.
night blues
separation
This is one of the most beautiful and saddest photographs I have taken. It is my sister, about a month before she died of cancer. And her daughter, who was 13.
_______________________________
On the last visit to my sister, she was in kidney failure, dying. We had conversations that were surreal. All I wanted was to stay with her.
One day a friend of hers, another mother and I, were working to make her more comfortable.
“I am sad!” my sister said, and started crying.
“Why are you sad?” I said, “What are you sad about?”
“I won’t be there! I won’t be there when she graduates from high school! I won’t be there for her first date! I won’t be there when she gets married! I don’t want to die!”
By now we are all crying. “You will be there!” I say. I am certain. “You won’t be in this form. You will be in another form!”
“I will?” my sister said, crying.
“Yes.” I said, crying too. “You have to go. You have to transform. You can’t stay. But you will be there for her.”
We cried and held her.
And I know for certain that she is there, she is here, she is with her daughter as her daughter graduates from high school, goes on a date, does all the things that daughters do.
Now and forever.
And the living children must be returned to the living parents. We cannot do otherwise and call ourselves humans.
The introverted thinker and the giant
My mother tells this story:
“The introverted thinker is three. I tell her to clean up her toys. She has a mat with cardboard houses and cars. I hear her in the other room, talking. First a low voice, then very high voices.
Low voice: “Stomp, stomp, stomp.”
High voices: “No, no, help, help! Run, run!” (small crashing sounds).
Low voice: “I am a giant, stomp, stomp.”
I peek in the room. The introverted thinker is kicking all the houses and cars over, being a giant. Then she cleans up the houses and the cars.”
And my mother laughs, and everyone who listens.
And do adults feel like giants to children sometimes? Giants in uniform who take their parents away? And can the child do anything? How helpless they may feel.Β
My son took this picture of his sister.
loss
For the Daily Prompt: famous.
This is not Michealangelo’s Pieta. This is from the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in Washington, DC. This is Apres la temepete (After the Storm) by Sarah Bernhardt, a sculpture of a Breton peasant woman cradling the body of her grandson who had been caught in a fishermanβs nets. This is from about 1876.
I took this visiting my son at the end of last year.
Memorial Day and we remember our lost. Much love to you and yours.
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