Lessons

Lessons
by Pat Schneider

I have learned
that life goes on,
or doesn't.
That days are measured out
in tiny increments
as a woman in a kitchen
measures teaspoons
of cinnamon, vanilla,
or half a cup of sugar
into a bowl.

I have learned
that moments are as precious as nutmeg,
and it has occurred to me
that busy interruptions
are like tiny grain moths,
or mice.
They nibble, pee, and poop,
or make their little worms and webs
until you have to throw out the good stuff
with the bad.

It took two deaths
and coming close myself
for me to learn
that there is not an infinite supply
of good things in the pantry.


"Lessons" by Pat Schneider from Another River: New and Selected Poems. © Amherst Writers and Artists Press, 2005

Tony Hoagland Poem

Migration

This year Marie drives back and forth
from the hospital room of her dying friend
to the office of the adoption agency.

I bet sometimes she doesn't know
What threshold she is waiting at—

the hand of her sick friend, hot with fever;
the theoretical baby just a lot of paperwork so far.

But next year she might be standing by a grave,
wearing black with a splash of
banana vomit on it,

the little girl just starting to say Sesame Street
and Cappuccino latte grand Mommy.
The future ours for a while to hold, with its heaviness—

and hope moving from one location to another
like the holy ghost that it is.

"Migration" by Tony Hoagland from What Narcissism Means To Me © Graywolf Press, 2003.

mc was a good fish.

mc was a good fish. He lived alone in a tank with a big hunk of wood and a device that made bubbles and he ate store-bought fish pellets twice a day. Baby liked to help feed him. She liked to eat his food and watch him swim. Sometimes she'd put her front leg (her arm, to me) into the tank up to the shoulder to try to reach him. She's our only cat that comes to the call, "Wanna feed the fish?" But mc died today. Jerzy and I put him in a tiny box and took him to the field tonight and dug a hole with a stick and buried him. We told him he was a good fish and we hoped he'd been happy. Jerzy said she'd get me another fish . . . a better fish, she said. What could be better than mc, I thought? Jerzy said my new fish will be blue. I'm gonna name him mc squared.

Poetry of Timothy J. Nolan

The Dreams of the Old

So they are around our table—my mother,
my father, an uncle—and we begin to talk
about our dreams—with some urgency—
as if our dreams could pinpoint our psychic
dangers—our unrealized goals—our
ordinary fear of death and the future.
My mother talks about her dreams of flying
over the little town where she grew up—
over the old Opera House—down Main Street—
with all the people she knew below her—
then towards the gently flowing river—
that seemed to flow into the sunset—
toward which she soared—she lingered
with us on that image—as if she had said
enough—then—my uncle talked about
his recurring dream—he's going to be
in a play—but no one's bothered
to rehearse the scenes—he's standing
in the wings waiting to go on—he doesn't
know what he will say—all through this
my father is silent—he is closest to death—
we all know this—we forgive him his silence—
his silence—has his presence—as in a dream.


The Eulogy

He could be funny, but only in small groups
of meek women—which is to say—he was not
very funny. He had beautiful and expressive
hands which he normally kept in his pockets.
When he was roused to passion, as he seldom was,
it would usually go unnoticed. He did have
strong feelings for animals—his family crest included
the loon—that symbol of fidelity and lonely song.
He was quite a mimic—I personally remember
how he could sound just like Bobby Kennedy—underwater—
if he was drunk enough. I suppose you all remember
his obsession with orchids—it was strange at the end—
his fretting over their blossoming—when would it happen?
Then, his disappointment when they would fade and drop.
He was a collector of sales receipts—some of you
may not know this—he would ask you to empty
your pockets to show him where you’d been, what you bought.
At his confirmation on June 4, 1954, he chose a verse
from the Old Testament, The Book of Haggai—“He that
earneth wages earneth wages to put in a bag with a hole.
Consider your ways, sayeth the Lord.” Let us consider
him . . . as we head downstairs. There must be other stories.

BIFOCAL dec 2006

Ted Kooser. Poet.

Father

Today you would be ninety-seven
if you had lived, and we would all be
miserable, you and your children,
driving from clinic to clinic,
an ancient, fearful hypochondriac
and his fretful son and daughter,
asking directions, trying to read
the complicated, fading map of cures.
But with your dignity intact
you have been gone for twenty years,
and I am glad for all of us, although
I miss you every day--the heartbeat
under your necktie, the hand cupped
on the back of my neck, Old Spice
in the air, your voice delighted with stories.
On this day each year you loved to relate
that at the moment of your birth
your mother glanced out the window
and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today
lilacs are blooming in side yards
all over Iowa, still welcoming you.

Poem: "Father," by Ted Kooser, from Delights and Shadows. © Copper Canyon Press

Iraq body count.

Thanks to Sharry at Embodied Aging I've just been introduced to the Iraq Body County Exhibit. The photos are powerful. Each red flag stands for 5 American deaths, each white flag for at least 5 Iraqi civilian deaths since 2003. I'm hoping to see lots more of this one as it travels. God damn George W. Bush and his cronies. Just god damn them all.

Amy Tan on Creativity and All Matter of Things

Amy Tan on TED. This is an amazing talk. It's not short like YouTube. It lasts all of about 20 minutes or so. Remember when sitting and watching one amazing lecture for 20 minutes wouldn't have seemed like a long time? When my kids were little I read an article about Sesame Street, the wonder show that was supposed to teach kids letters and numbers and all matter of interesting concepts. The article I read was on the printed page. The letters didn't transmogrify, an A becoming an apple, an aardvark, an airplane, all in dazzling colors. They just sat there and formed words. I thought, hmmmm, time to turn off the television. So for eight years it was off. Here it is, lots of years later and, at least around my house, we've all got our heads stuck in our computers and I think we're becoming YouTubed: Definition - unable to watch anything for more than three minutes.

Amy Tan is brilliant and funny. It's worth every minute if you can find the time to listen. If you find a transcript let me know. I'd like to read it.

Happy Birthday Julia Katherine

Today is my mother's birthday. I hadn't been gearing up to notice her birthday as it approached. It's just that I kept encountering the date today and each time I'd think, Huh, it's Mom's birthday, until I finally had to admit that I felt it. It's been a long time since she died. I know that because Duck was just a puppy when Mom was dying and now she's not. I didn't actually know she was dying but I knew she was failing and needy and clingy and unapproachable at the same time, and I felt a need for something needy that would respond with unconditional love so I got a puppy.

I miss her sometimes, Mom that is, not Duck who snores on the floor next to my bed at night and eats my animal crackers during the day, but my mother - tiny, mean, arrogant, judgemental, lonely thing that she was.

I know she wanted to be loved and touched and held as much as the rest of us. She just didn't know how to go about it. On the last night of her life I lay next to her in her bed while the music of Fleetwood Mac blared in the hospice room next door. She gripped my hand soundly and sweetly and I thought, See, it's not so bad to be held. Really, it's not so bad.

Finally

Finally

Finally will it not be enough,
after much living, after
much love, after much dying
of those you have loved,
to sit on the porch near sundown
with your eyes simply open,
watching the wind shape the clouds
into the shape of clouds?

Even then you will remember
the history of love, shaped
in the shape of flesh, everchanging
as the clouds that pass, the blessed
yearning of body for body,
unending light.
You will remember, watching
the clouds, the future of love.

- Wendell Berry

Finally, it will be enough for me when I know our elders are not locked inside the halls of nursing homes, never to sit outside on a porch at sundown to look and remember again. Finally, it will be enough for me when I know that each one of us will be where we want to be at sundown.

Not Dead Yet! Words of Wisdom

Judith, of Not Dead Yet! posted instructions to her sons as she ages. I think it should be a message for all children and caretakers. Better you should read it at the source, but in case you were not going to click on through, here's a copy.

"The programme which I wrote about yesterday gave rise to several thoughts about my own care in the future, if a time comes when I can no longer live independently. I made notes and here is the message I want to leave for my sons:

TO MY SONS

If I become incapable of looking after myself:

I would not expect any of you to take care of me in your own home. You must be committed to the future, rather than the past; that is nature’s way, however hard.

But if I have to go into care, please don’t abandon me there. If I have not been able to arrange my own care, try to put me somewhere where you can visit me regularly, if not necessarily often.

Remember I am still the person you have known all your life and who has loved you all your life, and you are likely to be the most important thing in my life at this stage.

Don’t lie to me and say I will get better and come home if I won’t. The truth between us can be used positively, while lies are more likely to create suspicion than to reassure.

If I no longer have my wits:

DON’T let anyone leave me parked in front of a TV which is permanently on, and over which I have no control. The end of life needs to be faced with a quiet mind. The playing of good music on occasions may be a good thing however.

If you talk to others in my presence, do so as though I can hear what you say – who knows, maybe I can.

Just be content to be with me at times – you don’t have to talk all the time to be companionable and give comfort, and it will take so much of your energy if I cannot respond.

At the end:

If you possibly can, be there with me and hold my hand, so that I can feel your loving presence as I go."

Poem

The Writers Almanac keeps publishing poems that I can't resist posting. Here's one of them.




Moment of Inertia

It's what makes the pancake hold still
while you slip the spatula under it
so fast it doesn't move, my father said
standing by the stove.

All motion stopped when he died.
With his last breath the earth
lurched to a halt and hung still on its axis,
the atoms in the air
coming to rest within their molecules,
and in that moment
something slid beneath me
so fast I couldn't move.

Poem: "Moment of Inertia" by Debra Spencer from Pomegranate. © Hummingbird Press, 2004.

Poem by Carol Frost

I originally posted two
poems.
On second glance
I had to separate them.
It didn't seem fair to either one.

Apiary viii (For the ones

who line the corridors and sit
silent in wheelchairs
before the television with the volume off,
whose cares
are small and gray and infinite,
time as ever to be faced    ...
Methuselahs the nurses wash
and dress without haste —
none needed    ...
this one has drunk from the poppy-cup
and drowses in her world of  dream    ...
Heliotrope,
carnations, wakeful violets, and lilies in vases —
masses of  flowers — wrap
the urine-and-antiseptic air in lace    ...
Please wake up; it is morning;
robins whistle; the bees dance.
Isn't this other one listening
from her shell of  silence,
and shouldn't she smile at the green return
and dappled light through windows?
As earth orbits the corridor
clocks are wound    ...
The last hour is a song or wound    ...
Except in this corridor — mother's —
where finity's brainless wind
blows ash, and ash again
blows through their cells:
So much silence, so little to say in the end.)

Carol Frost, from Poetry (October 2007)

Suicide. Not a catchy title but what else can I call it?

According to the November 27, 2007 NY Times article by Jane Brody, A Common Casualty of Old Age: The Will to Live ,

"Suicide is more common among older Americans than any other age group. The statistics are daunting. While people 65 and older account for 12 percent of the population, they represent 16 percent to 25 percent of the suicides. Four out of
five suicides in older adults are men. And among white men over 85, the suicide rate — 50 per 100,000 men — is six times that of the general population. . . snip . . .Contrary to what many people think, depression is not a normal part of growing older. Nor is it harder to treat in older people. But it is often harder to recognize and harder to get patients to accept and continue with treatment."

Apparently old people read The Times too. And some of them write. Therefore, a follow-up article, A Heartfelt Appeal for a Graceful Exit February 5, 2008. I quote:

After reading the Personal Health column on Nov. 27 on preventing geriatric suicide, Gloria C. Phares, a 93-year-old retired teacher in Missouri, wrote:

“I was healthy until 90, and then Boom! Atrial fibrillation; deaf, can’t enjoy music or hear a voice unless 10 inches from my ear; fell, fractured my thigh and am now a cripple; had a slight stroke the day after my beloved husband died after 61 years of marriage.

“I’ve lived a happy life, but from here on out it’s all downhill. Is there any point in my living any longer? I’m not living — just existing. I very much want to die, but our society doesn’t let me.
Oh for a pill to ease myself out and end my pain, pain, pain.”

Assisted suicide. It's not just for the young.

Mom and Politics

My mother loved this sweater. She wore it for nearly 25 years. Same with the thin gold bracelet that I gave her for Mother's Day in 1978. She wore it every day until she died.

My mother also loved politics. She'd watch all matter of political television shows; sit for hours watching the returns on election night (She also watched the Ball drop every New Years and the Oscars.); could recognize any "famous" person on the street.

Unlike me, she was outspoken about her views. She had a particular dislike for George H.W. Bush and almost seemed personally offended by the very existence of his wife. It was with Mom in mind that I "came out" just the tiniest bit yesterday, indicating that my vote would be cast for the woman of my choice. I toyed with the term Obamanation, not because I truly think Obama is a bad choice at all, but because I was proud to have made it up. I'll most definitely vote for him if he wins the primary. I suspect I may be voting on issues of gender, age, innate intelligence, experience, and demonstration of my unflagging commitment.

I called my sister in California to see who she'd be voting for today. It turns out she'd already voted by absentee ballot - for Richardson. It was some sort of statement vote, she said. She asked a colleague if it was wrong of her and he said it wasn't nearly as bad as what he'd done a while back. He voted for Al Sharpton - He said, "Sharpton was the only candidate who mentioned poor people at all. Everything he said was crazy, but at least he mentioned them."

I don't know which one my mother would have voted for this year, Hillary or Obama. I suspect, as I do, she would have agreed with Chris. Either way, I think the choice would be okay.

About the bracelet I gave my mother. I removed it from her wrist when I took her to hospice. Four days later, I wore it as I lay in bed next to her, holding her hand, while the patient in the next room played loud rock music, on the last night of her life.

TheWriter's AlmanacDoes it Again

"Sonnet for Mary" by Ralph Edwards

The old lady who's walking along Concourse A
Rather slowly in front of you, is making her way
To get on a plane to fly to Denver
Though she is in pain, she won't complain ever.
She walks all bent over. She's 91.
But her sister died and there's work to be done.
She must bury her sister and clean out the condo
And see to her niece who's retarded, sweet Rhonda.
There's a funeral to arrange, words to be said,
And her brother is useless, he's gone in the head.
Stuff to be cleaned out, a condo to sell,
And a 50-year-old child who can't care for herself.
She's an old lady who's needed out there.
She's heading for Denver on a wing and a prayer

Sharon Olds

A Week Later

A week later, I said to a friend: I don't
think I could ever write about it.
Maybe in a year I could write something.
There is something in me maybe someday
to be written; now it is folded, and folded,
and folded, like a note in school. And in my dream
someone was playing jacks, and in the air there was a
huge, thrown, tilted jack
on fire. And when I woke up, I found myself
counting the days since I had last seen
my husband-only two years, and some weeks,
and hours. We had signed the papers and come down to the
ground floor of the Chrysler Building,
the intact beauty of its lobby around us
like a king's tomb, on the ceiling the little
painted plane, in the mural, flying. And it
entered my strictured heart, this morning,
slightly, shyly as if warily,
untamed, a greater sense of the sweetness
and plenty of his ongoing life,
unknown to me, unseen by me,
unheard, untouched-but known, seen,
heard, touched. And it came to me,
for moments at a time, moment after moment,
to be glad for him that he is with the one
he feels was meant for him. And I thought of my
mother, minutes from her death, eighty-five
years from her birth, the almost warbler
bones of her shoulder under my hand, the
eggshell skull, as she lay in some peace
in the clean sheets, and I could tell her the best
of my poor, partial love, I could sing her
out with it, I saw the luck
and luxury of that hour.

Sharon Olds

Happy New Year and Happy Birthday Ruth

Ruth Ingeborg Alexander was born January 1, 1900. Every year on New Year's Eve I light a candle in her memory. I buy a yartzeit candle at the grocery store. It burns for many hours. It is customary to light this type of candle on the anniversary of a family member's death, but I am ever so thankful that Ruth was born to live on this planet, and I don't know much about nor care for religious traditions, and I never remember the exact date that she died. I prefer to light a candle for Ruth on the day of her birth.

Ruth came to take care of me and my four siblings when I was six weeks old. She was fifty. She told me she lied when my parents asked her if she had experience with children. She wanted that baby. That baby wanted her.

I wasn't with her when she had cancer and died. I didn't get to hold her hand, or rub her back, or stir ice cream until it was soft for her to eat. I just know that when I tried to call her to let her know I'd be coming to visit, her phone was no longer connected. Several days of calling government offices in Sweden led me to a women in a tax office who was willing to try to find her. And then the last time I called, the middle of the night for me, 9 AM in Sweden, "Miss Shapiro, I'm so sorry to have to tell you. Ruth Ingeborg Alexander, born January 1, 1900, is no longer alive.

I've lit a lot of candles for Ruth over the years, I estimate around 25. No reason to stop now. In fact, as I see it, every reason to continue.

Happy Birthday Ruth. Happy New Year to all.

Avery needed to e-mail her mother

Avery called to tell me she wanted to e-mail her mother tonight, her mother who died a couple of months ago. I told her I understood. I thought she should go ahead and e-mail her anyhow. I wanted to call my mother to wish her Merry Christmas but she's dead too.

After Dianne died I used to call her phone to listen to her voice on the answering machine. It felt weird, engaging in a covert act, but I did it. I called her phone more than once. More than twice. When her son, my nephew, changed the message I felt relieved and lost.

I called my sister on Christmas. I'm thankful she's alive. I promised I'd e-mail her. I told her I loved her.


I needed to talk to my sister..." by Grace Paley
~
I needed to talk to my sister
talk to her on the telephone I mean
just as I used to every morning
in the evening too whenever the
grandchildren said a sentence that
clasped both our hearts

I called her phone rang four times
you can imagine my breath stopped then
there was a terrible telephonic noise
a voice said this number is no
longer in use how wonderful I
thought I can
call again they have not yet assigned
her number to another person despite
two years of absence due to death

"I needed to talk to my sister..." by Grace Paley, from Fidelity. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

Snow on the Duplex Planet or Remembering Fathers

David Greenberger remembers in a lovely piece called "Snow".

I am reminded of the work of poet Sharon Olds. Her book, The Father, is an extraordinary, intimate yet familiar look into her experience of her father's death. It's odd that I would call it familiar since the death of my own father was so drastically unlike her long, introspective detailing of his gradual decline from illness to death and afterward.

His Stillness
by Sharon Olds

The doctor said to my father, “You asked me
to tell you when nothing more could be done.
That’s what I’m telling you now.” My father
sat quite still, as he always did,
especially not moving his eyes. I had thought
he would rave if he understood he would die,
wave his arms and cry out. He sat up,
thin, and clean, in his clean gown,
like a holy man. The doctor said,
“There are things we can do which might give you time,
but we cannot cure you.” My father said,
“Thank you.” And he sat, motionless, alone,
with the dignity of a foreign leader.
I sat beside him. This was my father.
He had known he was mortal. I had feared they would have to
tie him down. I had not remembered
he had always held still and kept quiet to bear things,
the liquor a way to keep still. I had not
known him. My father had dignity. At the
end of his life his life began
to wake in me.

Here's how my father's death goes:

He's alive and well, in New York playing in a bridge tournament at the Gotham Hotel. My mother and I are in Howard Johnson's in Princeton getting ice cream. We use the pay phone to call him. Turns out he's dead. I'm nineteen. On our way home my mother hands me a pill to take and I do. I do? What was I thinking? It's Librium, apparently her chosen way of experiencing the world. So not only is my father dead but I can't even feel it. Weird.

A Death Noticed

According to the article in the New York Times today, "Neighbors Reflect on a Death No One Noticed", by Andy Newman . . .

“For the last years of her life, Christina Copeman kept to herself.”

Her neighbors wondered and worried about her. When they saw her on the street they tried to engage her in conversation. She was not interested. They watched the mail pile up outside her door. When she was finally found inside her row house, dressed in winter coat and beret, she’d been dead for a year or more. She would have been seventy.

I never knew Christina Copemen. But I’ll remember her.