Tag Archives: family

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Fear stands

For RonovanWrites Weekly Haiku Prompt #79, the words are crystal and hope….

fear stands strong don’t look
crystal water reveals rocks
open eyes give you hope

 

I took the photograph in 2012, when my sister was referred to hospice for breast cancer. I took three trips to see her before she died. She was still very engaged with everyone on the second trip. But when she was not talking to anyone, her face was different. She was looking at eternity. She knew that I could see her doing it, because we knew each other so well. She did not want to talk about it to me until my last visit with her in this life. I felt so blessed and honored when she did talk to me, and I hope that she feels loved.

 

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Go on

I must go on without you
the Beloved opens the path before me
let the past fall behind, the clear parts
and the murky, we alter each memory when we
pull the file in our brain and refile it,
I have duty you see, though I will miss you
terribly and keep inviting you along
as our paths diverge by millimeters
I wonder if you mind perhaps you are relieved
or perhaps you refuse to feel whether you mind
or not, we walk in parallel for now and can still
touch fingertips across the gap, more than
fingertips actually, but not for much longer.
I am still small compared to you yet when I said
to the Beloved that I don’t see how to
carry all of this, my back was infinitely broad and strong
for a period, as if a dream. Kiss me and leave, then,
if you must and I will love you always.

The picture is of early morning fog clearing 1/10/16.

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The enemy

SoFarSoStu has tagged me for the three days, three quotations and tag three other people.

“The rules are to post 3 quotes over 3 days and nominate 3 bloggers each time to carry on with the challenge.”

I have to say quotation because I can hear my sister scolding me for “verbing” words.

My quotation is from Walt Kelly: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Pogo Possum says this while he is looking out over the dump, and all the trash that humans have created and thrown away. This was a late strip in the series and earlier other swamp characters were complaining about the dump: then trash is identified from each character.

Last night I hoped I would remember a dream. I dream that I am in flowing water and I keep seeing creatures in the water. I pass over one at last that is huge and black. I think, a whale? But it is a gigantic crow, in the water, waiting to rise. A crow, a trickster, a giant black bird. It is not dead or drowned, it is awake and watching.

Three bloggers to continue quotations if they wish:

trablogger

ompong

Amanuensis Sobriquet-Reverie

I took the picture from the top of the mountain, skiing last week. I suspect skiing is not the best activity for my carbon footprint, but I do love it… and the world is so beautiful, isn’t it?

 

 

 

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Leaver III

I have subsided back to where I was

before I fell for you

before I fell

you said, thoughtful, meticulous and shy

I am quiet, thoughtful, meticulous with patient charts
I am not shy so much as lonely
and mistrustful

I don’t trust many people

my small child self still loves you
but it’s a child love
and she knows you’re leaving
everyone has left her before
so she is very sad
everyone but me and the Beloved
so not everyone
but you are the first not me
that she opened up to

so yes, shy
she is terribly shy
she hid for years under rock
bedrock
in my soul

now she and I and Beloved
are walking hand in hand
in the gardens of my mind

thoughtful, meticulous and

shy

 

the photo is me, my grandmother and my father

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Last bonsai

This year both my children are 18 or over and they wanted this small tree for the Christmas tree. “Don’t kill a tree, mom.” they said.

This tree is the last bonsai from my parents. My mother died in 2000 from ovarian cancer. She was at home in hospice for nearly seven weeks and we had over thirty visitors. My sister and my father and I all ignored the plants: and most of the bonsais died with her.

My father cared for the remaining ones even as his health deteriorated. He died at home as he would have wished, in 2013, alone and a sudden death. Two of the three remaining trees died. So this ficus came home with me. I water it faithfully and brought out the small ornaments to decorate for the holidays. I don’t know how old it is. After we lose our parents, we wonder about things: where is this from, how old is it, was it important to you, was it a random gift? Did you buy it, did you love it, was it not something that you cared about?

This holiday ask a family member to tell you a story about something in their house. Ask about something that you like, or is unique, or that really doesn’t fit in. Ask about a piece of art or a piece of furniture or jewelry. And write the stories down for the next generation…. while you can.

 

 

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at the end of the massage

at the end of the massage
I was dreamy and he put a warm towel over me
and said that I was not to get up until
my body had absorbed all of the heat from the towel
and he left the room

and I thought dreamily that it was so nice
to have my armor removed and muscles unlocked
and to just be assigned to let warmth seep in to me
until I held it all

and I thought dreamily that if all of the archetypes
are in each of us and I am learning to love all of mine
and even and especially the most horrific ones the ones
we all want to reject, not mine, the monsters, oh, poor monsters
that howl in the wilderness that howl in the dark that howl
to be loved

and I thought dreamily that if I love all of the archetypes
inside me then they aren’t a group that is around a table
in my mind, when they are all loved they come together and I
am one and everything is one

and I thought dreamily that how surprising that I felt one
quite suddenly and with no warning and with warming and oh
Beloved all connected

and I thought dreamily that was I really feeling healed as if
all of the splits and breaks and damaged are healed just by
love and I can add to the love in the world loving the inside
terrible parts of myself oh and the monsters long to be loved so
their weeping is terrible

and I thought dreamily blessings monsters blessings Beloved and
love to all and I lay there until I had absorbed all of the warmth
from the towel

and I got up slowly

and returned to the world

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Fallen

I took this photograph outside the Weyerhouser King County Aquatic Center, where my daughter was one of the many WA state high school swimmers. It rained driving all the way there, rained the entire time we were there and then rained on my entire drive back…

This is for Photrablogger’s Mundane Monday Challenge #33. Water again, but now the beauty of water and leaves and asphalt….

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Walk away

I used to carry my phone around
hoping you would call me now
I walk away

my house is three stories and
I can’t hear the phone and still
I walk away

I long to hear your voice I send
a hopeful query to you then
I walk away

I leave the phone plugged in the wall
and go up the stairs and down the hall
I walk away

I listen in the quiet to hope sighing
in my heart and maybe dying as
I walk away

I took the photo at the National Junior Synchronized Swimming Competition in 2009.

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Songs to raise girls: Long Black Veil

 

This and The Fox are what I think of as the two core family songs. We sang this from as early as I can remember and my father played the Band’s version on the record player all the time. I taped his records to take to college…

This is the song my parents chose to raise girls on? Oh, and I do have it memorized….

Ten years ago on a cool dark night
There was someone killed ‘neath the town hall light
There were few at the scene and they all did agree
That the man who ran looked a lot like me

Ok, it starts with a murder. Someone is killed, in the town, at night. Be careful, little girls, bad things can happen at night.

The judge said “Son, what is your alibi?
If you were somewhere else then you won’t have to die”
I spoke not a word although it meant my life
I had been in the arms of my best friend’s wife

It is about infidelity and not only infidelity, but infidelity with his best friend’s wife. This song is a morality play. He doesn’t speak. I see the magazines at the counters in the grocery store and think about how different this song is from our current culture. Divorce and splashed all over the papers, that’s what the celebrities do today.

She walks these hills in a long black veil
She visits my grave where the night winds wail
Nobody knows, no, and nobody sees
Nobody knows but me

So she doesn’t speak either. She remains faithful to him in visiting his grave, but the marriage must continue, because she only goes at night.

The scaffold was high and eternity neared
She stood in the crowd and shed not a tear
But sometimes at night when the cold wind moans
In a long black veil she cries over my bones

She watches him die for what they considered a sin. This song is about ethics, really. The two of them had broken their code of honor and paid the price, which was that he died for a different crime. And did the man who really killed the person in the first stanza then go free?

Why wouldn’t they speak up? Perhaps she had children and he couldn’t support them. Perhaps they truly considered it a sin, a dishonor, a horrible mistake. Perhaps honor and honoring his best friend was more important than love…. Our current culture seems to think that love conquers all, but it doesn’t in this song. Did they do the right thing? This is a song to discuss and to think about and yes, a song to raise girls.

Though I think the husband and any children would know that there was something…. a parent and partner can’t really hide that deep sorrow….

It was written by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin in 1959 and originally recorded by Lefty Frizzell.

Lefty Frizzell: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50k18gL76AU]

The Band, 1968

Johnny Cash, 1968

Lots of others…. and us.

The photo is me and my sister, probably in 1993 or 1994.