Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

~Edna St. Vincent Millay~

Meditation 1

Once I saw the freshly built dam of two beaver, a half moon with mud and slender branches, the leaves still fresh upon them; then, as I watched, the water shoved with its silver gloves and it broke, it left the world forever.



~Mary Oliver, Long Life: Essays and Other Writing (2004)

Some of the Truth

Perseid Shower (NASA)

My life, the 56 years of it I have lived so far, has been book-ended by death. To lose your mother and year-old brother when you are seven, or four, as my other brother was: that teaches you certain things about life and death and about the universe we inhabit, which is elegant and beautiful, but also chaotic and savage. To lose your own child? After such knowledge, what forgiveness?* One cannot even figure out who to forgive. One wonders about the Perseids: a beautiful shower of stardust, or a sign of catastrophic eruption and disintegration? Both, I guess.

I have spent much of my lucid time this past year thinking about life and death, materiality and spirit, freedom and grace, unfreedom and evil. I think about how to go forward; I wonder what "going forward" means. The Gerstenbergers, whose story appears here, are marking the two-year anniversary of the loss of their beautiful 12-year-old Katie today. The Johnsons, here, are gathering tomorrow to celebrate the 30th birthday of their beautiful Joey, gone for fifteen months. Our Lovely Daughter turns 22 on Wednesday; her brothers' 25th birthday is September 1, and the anniversary of Chicago Son's death is the next day.

Twenty-five years ago I was a little more than 38 weeks pregnant with my boys. Thirty-eight is deemed full-term for twins, so the ensuing two weeks were full of consternation for my doctors. I spent most of my time either doing my whale act in the city pool or fending off telephone calls from concerned family, who had been primed for baby-arrival for at least a month. I'm sure that the Gerstenbergers and the Johnsons, and all the other families like ours, have similar memories, of a time of such happy anticipation that it seemed nothing could ever mar the joy. I grew up in such a family, a family shaken by the ever-present dichotomy of life, the great gift, and death, the relentless stalker.

That my mother should have died seems impossible. My mother was beautiful, and blonde, and could sing, and four people depended upon her for almost everything. That my brother should have died seems impossible. Such a deep gurgle of a laugh he had, a sound representative of the exuberance which filled our home. People who know about such things, people who do therapy or teach psychology for a living, have on occasion told me that I must have had a wonderful mother. They tell me that my own ability to create a loving home must have been nurtured in those few years in which she enveloped us in love and delight.** And it does seem, in fact, that we lived in simplicity and freedom** in those years, with sunlight streaming onto the hardwood floors of our country house and life uncomplicated by loss.

I wanted, so much, to provide such a life for my own children. I never expected to shelter them from all of life's challenges and hardships, but I wanted to protect them from the harsh reality of early death. My husband, whose parents and siblings are all alive, said to me after our son died, "I never had any idea what you were talking about." Who would want anyone to know, really? Because, after such knowledge . . . .


*T.S. Eliot, Gerontion (1920). **Joseph Brackett, Jr., Simple Gifts (1848).

Ash Wednesday Prayer: Even Among These Rocks

VI.

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.


(from T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday)