River Magic

Birthed of mystery

Embellished with streams and creeks and falls

I am stones- shiny smooth or

Velvet with moss

Branches overreaching

I am rushing wind and

Soft sultry dusk

I am water ouzel play-working

Wing-flap swimming

At times bright and brazen

The echoing screech of fish eagle

By season, I am somber

Then bursting

Pulsing then

Ablaze with startling scandalous scarlet and

Luminous gold

I am naked and not ashamed

All ripples then glassy sheen

Or dark and secretive

Sheltering fish from hook and line

I am rapids of whipping cream and

Ocean’s deafening swell

Yet also deep doldrums

At times unknowable

But brash and furious

I am constant

Changeless and

Born anew each instant

I speak in these many voices

Biding silence is not for this moment

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Big Talk

“I must confess that cancer ruined me for small talk.” I didn’t write that; Mark Nepo did, but I agree. 

I read something yesterday about losing friends to depression. To tell the truth, I was already angry when I read it and reading it made me angrier still. It seems that all of the pain and frustration and grief and loss I feel is living under the umbrella of this one emotion: anger. I’m finding it highly uncomfortable.

The subject of people going away on me is a hard one to write about. Truth: it’s happened. It happens still. And not just because of the mental illness challenges I carry around like a backpack full of rocks, but add to that the physical stuff and add to that the reality that I have been in a “faith crisis” of sorts for the last several years. Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t share all of this. But I find I’m not very popular. It’s OK, I understand (sort of). And it hurts.

It’s hard to tell the truth, my truth. I’m ALWAYS too concerned about what others will think, how they might feel reading these words. But not telling the truth doesn’t make it less true. Pretending something doesn’t hurt, doesn’t lessen the pain.

I’d like to go back to making small talk, I really would. Yet life keeps calling me to the depths. My hope is that I can bring some comfort and hope to others that dwell here.

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motherless

This is a poem I wrote a few days after my mom’s funeral on December 22, 2016

we sit in this place

I see our faces

the curve of our shoulders

vacant stares

empty smiles

Motherless.

It’s not a new experience

but another, heavier

layer of the life we’ve had

another heavier layer of life

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2 Years Ago My Mother Died

(Following is what I read at her funeral)

My father’s wife of 61 years died last week.

My mom died.

Monica, Melissa and Cash lost their mom too.

Jessica, Kathleen, Nathan, Camille, Travis, Tiffany, Alexis, Sage, Sawyer, Hadley, Olivia, Henry, Abi, Ben and Jack lost their grandma.

Ethan, Adison, Violet, Juniper, Hunter, Evangeline, Alessandra, Sadie, and 2 babies on the way, lost their great-grandma.

And today that loss all but consumes me.

So I’m thinking of gifts-

The gifts my mother gave me.

Of course a few obvious things come to mind: she gave me life and 3 dear siblings who are my best friends.

But there are other things she gave me:

-the pleasure of cooking good food for those you love.

-an appreciation for nature and a love for being out in it

-a love of cookies and dark chocolate

-the serious business of collecting sea shells

-the ability to orchestrate the perfect picnic lunch

-a love for reading and reading aloud

-the ability to spell supercalifragilistic…

-a crazy love for newborn babies

-an aversion to hot weather

-attention to detail; sometimes too much attention to detail!

-a love of learning

-an absurd love for words ( i.e supercalifragilistic…)

-extreme fear of snakes

-an abiding appreciation for the humble petunia

-tenacity, perseverance and the ability to face into hard things

Yes, there is great loss represented here- in this place, on these faces, in these hearts.

AND there are the gifts that each of us has received from this woman, this wife, this sister, this mother, this grandma, this great-grandma -from my mom.

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Mosaic: Gifts

 (2015)

“A mosaic, ” writes Terry Tempest Williams, “is a conversation between what is broken.”

Across the room from me sit two women, their minds eaten away by dementia, or life.
The loud woman is quieted as the quiet woman covers a trembling hand with her own small, quiet hand. A gift.
There is conversation but I cannot make it out.
This place
is rife with, full, brimming with pain and dying.

I found her, the one I came for, sitting alone on her bare bed in her shared room.
“I think I’m dying” are the first words she says to me-her gaze surprisingly direct and intent.
I take her hand and lean in close so that my forehead is touching hers.
“Then what sis?” I ask. “After dying comes cookies and ice cream.” I am shamelessly invoking the sweet gods that comforted us in childhood.
“Yes” she says, then a question: “cookies?” And I begin feeding her the snack I hold in my hands.

Today- like too many before- she is dressed warmly, but she shivers. “Are you cold?”
“I’m fr-freezing.”
So I gently urge her bones so lightly cloaked in flesh, into another layer.
It’s then I realize- 
the odor, sharp and burning…

A quick message sent to the one who loves me most,
“I won’t be coming home before my meeting. I’m sorry about dinner.” (Not that he ever holds me to such an expectation or ever has-no.)
But I am leaving in the morning for 6 days, and a home made dinner the night before going is a gift I wanted to give.

Instead
I do what needs to be done, searching her closet for warm, dry pants, hoping to find some that actually belong to her-
I take her hand
then we make our slow stop and start journey to the bathroom.

A few days ago I was
receptacle, listening,
taking in the pain and grief of the one who loves me most;
the road we’ve traveled, 
the much that has been lost along the way and
I am flooded-
overwhelmed again with the enormity-
the all of it.
Diseased and damaged body, siblings who are, all three,
very ill. Others whom I love most, suffering.
I sit there facing into these words that seem to burn with sorrow,
anger
at the injustice found in every life,
in our lives.

It’s like I imagine drowning must feel.
Of course the tears come again and I find I am holding my breath.
The softest touch of a kind hand on my shoulder urges me
be here
breathe
feel this pain.
I do.
I must.

I kiss my sister goodbye, promise to visit soon, say I love you, as my eyes brim.

Stop off for smoothie-dinner.
“What did you do today?” the young man asks. 
I say the words “oncologist” “dementia”.
Handing me my dinner-drink- he finds my gaze:
“it’s on me”. And I know then that he speaks truth.
My pain- somehow, inexplicably dancing off my tongue
landed in his compassionate soul and is now
on him.
A gift.

Two hours later I bask in the arms – held tight against the frame of one I call son. 
I am held and comforted.
I don’t need to speak.
He knows.
A gift.

At home, another long strong hug- this time, my baby- 15, this larger-than-life child of mine also recognizes the pain,
maybe it’s in my eyes, maybe it’s the way I look around as if startled by a sharp noise.
He holds me long and close. 
A gift.

A few minutes pass as I reconnect with the All that needs to be done before tomorrow’s morning flight.
Then
daughter-friend, sits close on the sofa, leaning in. 
I rub her back. “So much pain” I say. She knows.
A gift.

And I know now this thing called life
demands from me what I truly believe
I can’t afford to give.
Yet also gives to me- again and again
Gifts
that I assuredly cannot allow the pain to madly paint over with its broad black strokes.

The truth I now believe even while I hesitate:
Life is both-
Pain
Gifts
and oh so often they are holding hands.

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Letting Go

I’m not so good at it. Actually, I’m really not good at it.

I cleaned the room. It needed cleaning. And sorting. Purging even.

There it is, the letting go.

Emptying the closet of boxes, I sat on the floor surrounded by

who knows what.

I deliberated and tossed and put away.

Then I saw it. 

A box full of her clothes. My sister’s clothes. 

I’m not sure why I have them, kept them, stored them.

She’s gone yet immediately I was in her presence.

She was here in the colors and textures.

But not the smell.

I buried my face in each item. One by one.

The socks even.

Nothing.

And I so desperately wanted someone to be there.


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