Poetic musings

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