Tag Archives: grief

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Look longing

This is for Ronovanwrites weekly haiku challenge #75: the words are charm and look. The prompt includes that the first two lines should make a sentence with the opposite meaning of the sentence made by the second two lines…..

you gift a young girl
I see your charm, look longing
see you lie to me

I took the photo across the street from my clinic just a few days ago.

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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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Live germ

This is for Ronovan’s Weekly Haiku Challenge #72, prompt words life and give.

They say they protect
life given by taking a
life, germ live alone

I am thinking of more than one definition of germ: an ovum and a sperm are germ cells, that could develop into an organism. When there is fighting and death over abortion I remember that the egg and the sperm are alive too separately. They can’t all live: we don’t have room or food, do we? And I was playing with more than one meaning and pronunciation of live.

Full Definition of GERM

1a :  a small mass of living substance capable of developing into an organism or one of its parts
b :  the embryo with the scutellum of a cereal grain that is usually separated from the starchy endosperm during milling

2:  something that initiates development or serves as an origin :  rudiments, beginning

3:  microorganism; especially :  a microorganism causing disease

I took the photo at our home swim meet.

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Through storm and fear

This is for photrablogger’s Mundane Monday #34.

I was downtown in the early morning for coffee and a walk. I walked out to Port Hudson. The wind was blowing very hard and the rigging was singing that eerie whistle wail. There are giant cleats out as both seats and advertising. I put one of my earrings on the cleat and took the picture. The earrings were my mother’s. After she died I looked at her jewelry. She loved little boxes and I was trying to understand the organization of the earrings. It was not by value, since plastic and gold were all mixed together. She was an artist and organized the earrings by color. These little plastic eiffel towers were in the box with red and pink earrings of all sorts. They are probably at least 30 years old. The tower looks so small against the black cleat with the rainwater. I hope that we can all care for each other through storms and fear.

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Dream state

I am in the soft dream state
longing for my love and mate
my heart won’t stop or hesitate

I cross the border into dreams
nothing quite is what it seems
I stop and play in bubbling streams

I wander in the tall green grass
years since the mower’s pass
unsullied by the smell of gas

I lean against a tree
I feel quiet happy free
I feel accepted just as me

my childhood was a frightened place
the woods were the safest space
if I spoke my heart would race

my work is with adults in pain
scars deep as canyons bleeding strain
my tears fall as gentle rain

my youngest child has reached eighteen
she’s bright and smart and kind not mean
I wonder what her eyes have seen

my adult work is nearly done
it’s time for me to have some fun
beneath the tree in moon or sun

I wander as a child
heart gentle meek and mild
connected to the world so wild

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Cheer for the other team

On Friday I was at the Washington State Swim and Dive Championships, at the Weyerhauser Pool in Federal Way, with our small town swim team. The girls did a great job and every race that they’d qualified for at districts, they also qualified for finals. None in the top eight, but all in the top 16.

The parents and our young women were excited and delighted. The pool is Olympic size with international flags hanging in two parallel rows along the roof. I love the flags and was admiring them. My daughter and I went to that pool for the first time when she was 8, for the National Junior Synchronized Swimming Competition. We volunteered to help at the competition.

Hearing the news of more bombs and shootings later in the day, I felt terribly sad. But there is hope in peoples’ kindness: in the culture of girls’ high school swimming each team does a cheer at the start of the meet. And the tradition is to do a cheer for the other team.

Finals started with cheers before the National Anthem. I asked my daughter if the cheers were for the other team and she said, “No, not at the State Competition.”

I am not cheering for anyone who has committed violence. But I am cheering for the voices of tolerance and love and peace and refusal to generalize hate on all sides. I hope we can all remember to cheer for the other team.

Mozart Requiem: Confutatis lacrimosa

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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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Where oh where is love?

How could we have love without grief?

The US culture seems to suppress grief, take grief away, heal grief, get over grief, but think about love without grief.

Could we love someone if we didn’t grieve when they died?

No. We couldn’t. That wouldn’t be love. Or that would be the pale shadow of love, love without loss, love that turned from the grave and forgot.

We cannot love without grief, so we need to make room for grief. We need to stand by each other during grief. We need to help each other, be present, be there, say the wrong thing, say the right thing, say nothing and just give love.

Love builds the Taj Mahal. Love writes Rumi’s poems. Love is the memories of the person we loved, we tell our children about them, we hold them in our hearts.

Love loves without logic, without sense. Love in spite of alcohol, addiction, lies, how can a person love an abuser? They love the person, not the abuse. They love the person, not the actions, not when the alcohol takes over, when the meth takes over, when the oxycontin takes over. Love loves the whole person and grieves the damage.

Love and grief are intertwined, a rosebush with thorns, there is no one without the other. No joy without despair, no light without dark, no you without me, no joining without separation.

I enter grief as I enter love, whole heartedly, oh, I may be afraid of the dark but I go there anyhow, I know as the waves close over my head and I sink into the depths:

There is no love without grief.

 

The picture is my mother, Helen Burling Ottaway, in high school. She died of cancer in 2000 and I still miss her terribly.

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Songs to raise girls: Pack up your sorrows

This song interests me. It is the fourth in my series about the songs that my sister and I learned growing up.

When we recorded our family songs, my sister said she liked it. I said, I think it is creepy, with that juxtaposition of a sweet tune and then words that are not so sweet.

No use cryin’
Talking to a stranger
Namin’ the sorrows you’ve seen

Oh, ’cause there are
Too many bad times
Too many sad times
Nobody knows what you mean

If somehow
You could pack up your sorrows
And give them all to me

You would lose them
I know how to use them
Give them all to me

The line that bothered me was “I know how to use them”. What does that mean? Use them for what?

No use ramblin’
Walkin’ in the shadows
Trailin’ a wanderin’ star

No one beside you
No one to hide you
An’ nobody knows where you are

Ah, if somehow
You could pack up your sorrows
And give them all to me

You would lose them
I know how to use them
Give them all to me

And how could you give your sorrows to someone else? The singer is offering to listen to sorrows but also take them away. “You would lose them.” And then the singer “knows how to use them”.

No use roamin’
Walking by the roadside
Seekin’ a satisfied mind

Ah, ’cause there are
Too many highways
Too many byways
Nobody’s walkin’ behind

Ah, if somehow
You could pack up your sorrows
And give them all to me

You would lose them
I know how to use them
Give them all to me

I never got around to asking my sister if it was the tune she liked or the words or what it meant to her. I chose to play that recording at her Washington memorial. I could not go to her California memorial because I was too ill. My father had terrible emphysema and was on oxygen. I thought I had pertussis but it turned out to be systemic strep A, which hurts. At any rate, I was too sick to travel. Her Washington Memorial was a month or two later, when I was well enough to organize it…..

You would lose them
I know how to use them
Give them all to me

It is by Pauline Baez. The version by Richard and Mimi Farina is the one I’m familiar with, so my parents probably had the record:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4LbU8w7Th4.

Joan Baez, Pauline and Mimi Farina were sisters. Joan Baez recorded it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAMe1bRW8Ao. So did Peter, Paul and Mary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVxNleqVpx4.

And so did Johnny Cash and June Carter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ctVhDEuTYE

The picture is a music party at my house in 2009, my father seated and Andy Makie on harmonica, Jack Reid standing with the guitar.

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Call

For RonovanWrites weekly haiku challenge #67.

The words are cheer and call.

Calling brings up my sister, calling her and waiting for her to call back. She died in 2012 of cancer. Grief, not cheer.

Cheer and call

cheer and call. I re
member dismember memo
ry no cheer or call

The photo is the Mount Saint Helen’s crater in 2012, with the recovering area below starting to be green again.