4. Posted January 20, 2020
Take me home
He takes my hands in his, and at the same time waves them away in frustration.
He brings both his hands up, his arms shaky with effort.
He uses them to show us what he means. What he imagines we do not understand.
We are here, in this house, he says. Indicating to his left hand. Now closed over into a fist.
And I want to be in this house in front, he says. Indicating with his right fist, abutting it onto the left.
I am here (left). I want to be here (right).
He imagines we do not understand. Our reluctance to take him home to the front house is due to lack of knowledge he needs to help us regain.
In his dying desire to go home, to be untethered from this life, to be home in the old house, he has himself forgotten. Forgotten that it is no longer open to us, that others live there momentarily. Forgotten that he is no longer able, with his remaining physical strength, to make it to the house in front.
Eventually he lets go, collapses back into the pillows, and shakes his head at his children by the bedside. In his mind, we are ignorant of what he wants, in ours, deeply unable to fulfil his wish.
A sudden sadness envelopes me – after a lifetime of moving, of globetrotting, of engaging with curiosity everything the world had to offer, he truly is ready to go home, ready to rest in the silence of eternity.
A reframe was needed.
Dad, you are home. You are safe. We are all here with you. We love you. You can let go.
I don’t know if it registered. At half past midnight on the night he died I found him still efforting his fragile dying frame out of bed, willing himself up, and perhaps still determined, to get to the front house to die.
Something or someone there was calling to him, he never could say, but as his spirit soared free I imagined he passed through the front house to answer the call of whatever it was that drew him there.
And then all was quiet.
And an eternity of silence followed.
The page for my posts written more as poetry musings:
3. Posted December 22nd, 2013
Winter solstice
Winter solstice
Night of the long shadows
Night marking winter beginnings
Marking paradoxically, the return of the sun
And in days to come
A rebirth
A new year
New moments to recreate and re-envision this life
Winter solstice
Arriving on the whispered tail of increasingly long shadows
Turning again toward the coming light
A night that can only be opened to with kindness
Kindness in the depth of suffering
Kindness in the depth of pain and despair
Kindness that knows to
Stop, to
Pay attention, to
Be still, to
Wait, to
Have faith, to
Trust, to
Care, to
Be present
Kindness that knows that this
Is enough
Is a radical act of love
Bringing light
To the shadows
Allowing the winter
At its deepest darkest freeze to
Feel the warmth
To nurture the shoots
To have faith
That growth of the green promise will come
Winter solstice
As we turn anew toward the sun
Will bring to these shadows
Compassion
Patience
Capacity to protect solitude
Be the guardians of our solace
And that of the other
Protect the slow lumbering human process
Taking its own time
Needing its own space
Hibernating
Nurturing
Waiting
To turn
Toward
And begin again
2. Posted July 1st, 2013
Silence the Answer
We fear the silence
The letting go
The being alone
The death that comes
But only in the silence
When all is quiet
When the breath can be heard
When the sound of this moment arrives
Do we begin to feel
The knowing
The waiting
The what was always here
And are able to step to the light
To pick up the phone and say all was well
To write that note to tell how it is now
To face forward into the unknown
Knowing that all is not lost
This silence
This death
This pain
This letting go
Is the one true thing to be trusted
That life will always hold us
Even as we feel we are falling
That the light will always come at the end of the longest night
And the silence will be filled anew with
New sounds
New growth
New life
1. Posted June 30th, 2013
When death is the secret
When death if the secret
No words utter its name
No doors open to the light
When death is the secret
Gazes slip away
Not to be met or linger
When death is the secret
No answers are to be found
And questions pile up unanswered
When death is the secret
Pain grows
Anxiety looms large
Fear stalks the night
When death is the secret
Life’s moments are not lived
No light possible until death departs us
When death is the secret
Death arrives unannounced
Is itself the answer
Finally to be heard by the deafening silence
I loved your work, meditative, reflective, a little melancholic, and soulfully true. Thank you for sharing this! And please post more.