March 17: Saint Patrick

This posting is going to be shorter than most of my other blogs. It's not because I'm hungover from too much green beer or suffering gastrointenstinal distress from an abundance of corned beef and cabbage. In fact, aside from wearing green dress pants and a watch with a green band, I did very little to celebrate the feast of the patron saint of Ireland. I spent a good deal of the afternoon and evening at a funeral and wake. (It wasn't even an Irish wake. It was a Methodist wake, which means lots of casseroles and cheesy potatoes.) The funeral was for the mother of a good friend, and, at the end of the night, even if I'd felt inclined to kiss the Blarney, I had no energy left.


That being said, I'm going to have a guest writer for my blog today. This morning, my good friend whose son was recently diagnosed bipolar, among other things, shared a poem with me that she had written. Considering the subject matter of my last few postings, I thought I would share her poem with you. (It's one of those poem's that I wish I'd written, but let's leave my jealousy issues alone for now.)

My friend is struggling with her son's illness. It's not that she's in denial. She is simply a mother who wants to make her son whole again, and she knows she can't. It's terrible to have someone you love hurting and beyond your reach. If that someone is your child, it's like watching the muscle of your own heart slowly deteriorate and dissolve. It sucks, pretty much.

Before Patrick became the focus of his modern, drunken holiday, he was the son of a Roman Britain deacon and his wife. At sixteen, Patrick was kidnapped and carried off as a slave to Ireland, where he remained for six years. I can't think of a better metaphor for mental illness than enslavement. Suddenly, the son you know is gone from your life, and you are left in a vacuum of grief and confusion. Patrick eventually escaped because he heard a voice telling him to go home. But, I'm sure you're aware of the fact that he eventually returned and converted Ireland to Christianity. Again, his return was the result of a voice/vision, and he followed that vision back to the land of his enslavement. In one of the two extant letters written by Patrick, he describes that vision:

I saw a man coming, as it were from Ireland. His name was Victorius, and he carried many letters, and he gave me one of them. I read the heading: "The Voice of the Irish." As I began the letter, I imagined in that moment that I heard the voice of those very people who were near the wood of Foclut, which is beside the western sea--and they cried out, as with one voice: "We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us."

My friend had a vision of her son's enslavement yesterday. The poem that follows describes that vision. This is her son, carried off to a strange land. This is her mother's heart dissolving:

Finder's Keepers?

I search your blue eyes.
I feel your agony, pleading, despair.
I want to make myself small,

crawl inside your brain,
pull out the blackness.

I would throw it out like rotten fish,

wrap it in a box,
tie it with my strongest knots.

I could squish it small,

hide it in a margerine tub
in the back of the fridge.

I don't want to know the furry, black parasite

that's taken up residence between your ears.

Why can't I make it all better?
Skinned knees, broken bones, second place,

wrecked cars, truancy have fixes.

If you name it, does it mean you have to keep it?