Tag Archives: loss

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Clementine

If I lose my memory, at least, if it’s Alzheimer’s, it’s like a trip back through time. People seem to lose recent memory and then they are in past memories, which burn out like small fires. Like matches, taking the neuron with it.

I have joked that if I was in memory care, I would be singing. I know 9 verses of Clementine and I would sing and sing and sing, because my earliest happy memories are singing.

I know the silly add on verses.

“Now all ye boy scouts, learn a lesson
from this dreadful tale of mine
Artificial respiration
would have saved my Clementine.”

“How I missed her, how I missed her,
how I missed my Clementine
‘Til I kissed her little sister
And forgot my Clementine.”

“In my dreams she still doth haunt me
dressed in garments soaked in brine
In my life I would have kissed her
Now she’s dead, I draw the line.”

Here is Pete Seeger, banjo and all.

The words change. Second verse for me is “Light she was and like a feather”. His version is “like a fairy”. It’s lovely to see how the versions change over time. I did not learn the churchyard verse, and he does not sing the three verses that I add above.

Meanwhile, Steeleye Span did not do Clementine, at least not on Youtube. But this is my favorite moral song from their albums. Would you run as, well, you’ll have to listen to the ending to hear the three seven year penance punishments.

Anyhow, I learned to sing at the same time that I learned to talk. Singing was the happy and safe part. That is where I will go if my memory fails me.

The photograph is from my father’s 70th birthday, in 2008. He is the one with the guitar. Andy Makie is on harmonica and CF is in the back. I don’t know what song this was, not Clementine. My friend Maline took this photograph. She died in 2023. My father died in 2013 at age 75. He was not confused when he wore his oxygen. Without it, he sounded drunk.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: dementia.

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Rumor

Oh, kindness. I think one huge kindness is not to listen to rumors and not to assume that they are correct. Whew. Though if you are ever the victim of a rumor, it will tell you who your real friends are. They will stay present, stay in touch, stay with you. Some will ask about it, others won’t, but they will stay. And you may be amazed by how many people disappear into the woodwork. They are staying “neutral”, they’ll say, but they don’t call, answer calls, or include you any more. Then they may show back up in the future. You will not trust them again. Ok, if they were going through some trauma of their own, but otherwise, no.

Sol Duc is keeping an eye on the neighborhood. She never tells me rumors, ever.

Here are three versions of Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out. I like the Bessie Smith one best. The John Lennon tune is different.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: kindness.

And another:

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Threat

I am practicing the soprano part of the Brahms Requiem to sing in early May.

The second movement is amazing. It is in 3/4 time, waltz time, but slowed to a dirge, a march, a crawl. And by adding movement on the last 16th note in a three beat sequence, so the 11/12 beat, it sounds threatening and frightening. It builds and builds and then quiets, only to build again. It is terrifying. What an amazing piece of music!

And the words, too. “For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.”

At last it opens into a fugue and glory, but still with intensity. “But the word of the Lord endureth forever. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” There is still the undertow of grief and confusion and fear.

The building is at Fort Worden and is certainly falling away.

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Tamped

The Ragtag Daily Prompt is “trial by fire“.

Which makes me think of the wars, ongoing and restarting, and the fire and death. What do we get out of killing children? Burning homes and families. I don’t understand. Revenge? To “teach a lesson”? I think it will only teach more hate.

So this morning I am listening to the Bach Magnificat and then the Rutter Magnificat. Tamp the flames of hate and lift my voice in song and may the world work towards peace. I light my candles in the early morning in prayer for us all.

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Fun in hell

Even when I go through hell on earth
mother dies, marriage crumbles
sister cancer, father cries
divorce, sister dies
pneumonia, pneumonia, pneumonia
can’t breathe and still have to defend myself
when accused of crazy and reported
Bitch is not a psychiatric disorder
hypoxia is not a psychiatric disorder
my cousin helps my niece to sue me
I never thought my family would have lawsuits
never
yet my sister sets them to explode
after she dies

I don’t quite die
though it is pretty rough
and grief tears at my throat
like a wolf, like a lion
like a hyena,
piranhas
I have two children and I stay
because they do not deserve this mess
I guard and fight and stay present

And there is laughter
even in hell
I time a comment and my daughter
snorts milk out her nose
I tell my children I shouldn’t handle knives
because of a meeting at work
“Five against one?” says my son
“Yes,” I say
“Well, they didn’t have enough people, did they?”
And I laugh and we go out to dinner.

Is this my fault?
Is it something I did?
The marriage was me, yes,
I do two years of counseling
trying to understand
I can’t change it
but maybe I can understand

A sort of a friend
ok
a false friend
a liar
says he never changes.
I say I always try to learn
I want to know
I want to grow
how can he not grow?
how can he refuse to learn?

he doesn’t talk to me any more
he stops speaking to people forever
but
there is no forever
there is now and the Beloved
and the dark and the light are united
after death
will you be a proton
or an electron
or gravity?

There are hells on earth
worse than mine
prayers
I send prayers
for the innocents
everyone was newborn
and innocent
once

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An ideal death

Death is quotidian, isn’t it?

There is a movement to make death more ideal. I agree that we should talk more about death and find out what people want, but ideal is complex. The VA did a survey and found three ideal deaths. Which is your ideal?

  1. The Hallmark Death. In hospice, surrounded by family and friends, making peace with everyone, visitors from all over. My mother died of ovarian cancer. We had a hospital bed and a baby monitor and when she was awake, she would say, “I am ready to be entertained.” It lasted for 6 weeks and my grandmothers bones rose out of her face as her weight dropped. I was so tired by the end that I couldn’t see straight. She did not want us to cry, so my sister and I did not cry. Afterwards I wished that I had cried.
  2. No warning, sudden death. Take me, in my sleep, or suddenly, with little or no warning. The heart is the number one cause of death. My father went this way, in his home. I was the one who found him, though I’d expected it for over a year. He was a bit of a hermit and had horrible emphysema, was on oxygen and steroids, but he stayed at home. That’s what he wanted and I did not fight it. It was not much fun finding him.
  3. Fight every step. There are some people who remain full code, who have end stage cancer and want dialysis, who will not give in. My sister was in this category. She was a truly amazing fighter and refused hospice until the last week. This can be about believing that one can continue to hope for a miracle or it can be about social justice or about a promise to one’s family. Some families have said, if father had been able to access care earlier, he wouldn’t be dying, so he wants everything done. I can understand all of those feelings.

So which would be your ideal? Ideally we would talk to our parents and our children and explore these different ideals. I did that with people in clinic. There are interesting openings. A patient would say, “I don’t want to die of cancer.” I would say, “How do you want to die? What is your ideal?” They would be surprised and I would explain the three different scenarios above. “Put in your order, though we do not have any control.” I would say.

We do not have control. I did prenatal care and deliveries for 19 years and didn’t have control there. I always preferred to intervene as little as possible and only if I had to for mother or baby’s health. Once our surgeon went to take out an appendix and it turned out to be something else, so took three hours. I had called a cesarean section, but had to wait. The baby had a fast heart rate and it rose in those three hours. We finally did the c-section and the baby promptly looked completely fine. I have no idea why the heart rate rose from 140 to 180. We were all hugely relieved. Sometimes the cause was obvious: a short umbilical cord or a cord wrapped four times around the neck, but sometimes the cause is a complete mystery.

I talked to a person yesterday who has a frail 90 year old in their life. They said something about keeping them from dying. I said, “Well, they are going to die eventually.” Then I thought, I wonder if they have had the discussion: what is your ideal? Do everything, which may mean being in a hospital? Hospice? At home? And I sometimes see families fight, because siblings have different ideals and may not even be aware of it.

Blessings.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: quotidian.

I took the photograph of the neighbor’s flowers while I was walking the cats in the dark. I like it.

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Favorite

I used to have a favorite agate, chalcedony nodule
found on the beaches here, during Covid. Surprising me.
I did not expect anything and only long to find something
to sustain me, just a little. I find a stone shaped heart, agate hard
and not clear. Not chalcedony, murky with impurities.
Yet the stone sustains me and I keep walking.
Even when I see that the impurities are on the outside too.
Camouflage, refusing to be washed clean, refusing change.

That one is lost, back in its’ native mud and sand. Someday
it may be polished clear, but it shrinks as it is tossed
among the other stones. It is running out of time and surface area.
It may not be heart shaped any more. My favorite now is clear,
a rich red with tiny streamers of darker red inside. I carry it with me,
I carry it in my heart. It is more nearly shaped like a heart,
a real heart, then the conventional one that is lost.

Be warned, then, that that one may be on the beaches here.
Or it could be that it has already been picked up
and taken, the finder hoping to wash it clean and see
the clear beauty as the light shines through.
Transparency is rare. I walk a mile of beach to find even one
clear stone. Don’t be fooled by that one: the dirt is embedded.
I won’t say never, but the chances of transparency and love
shrinks as it is worn away by the restless tides
and crashing against all the other rocks.

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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?

______________________

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.

___________

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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Daily Evil: Z is for Zzzzz

Sleep is not evil. Nor is snoring, though you might think someone is evil at 2 am if their snoring is keeping you up.

This is a small watercolor, 9 by 6 inches. Again, no date, but it is a view near my parent’s house in Chimacum. They loved that house and the views. They moved there in 1996 and my mother was diagnosed with cancer a year later. I want to end with this painting because they were so happy there, even with the cancer. They had wanted to move to the northwest for years, but waited until my grandmother died. She was in her 90s and they were afraid to move her. After she died, it took three years to find a place and sort things and move.

So let’s end with them sleeping and waking to morning and the sun coming over the mountains and the farms around them and the views.

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Daily Evil: M is for moan

M for moan and maudlin and mourn and mountain.

Another watercolor, 14 by 27, 1987. There is another older watercolor, no year, on the reverse. Misty mountains. This could be West Virginia, the panhandle where my grandmother lived for a while, or a trip to the northwest.

M is for mother, too. I miss her.