Yes, I’ve been out of commission for the last couple weeks when it comes to blogging. I had a little mishap with my iPad. Basically, I was grading some final exams, and my iPad fell off the corner of a table. The screen shattered. So, for the past 14 or so days, I’ve been waiting for my replacement iPad, screen protector, and bluetooth keyboard.
Well, as evidenced by this post, I am back in business, and just in time for my sister Rose’s birthday. She passed in 2022, and, since that time, I don’t think a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of her. I miss her terribly. She would have been 61 years old today.
Marie Howe writes about a sister missing her brother . . .
Gretel, from a sudden clearing
by: Marie Howe
No way back then, you remember, we decided,
but forward, deep into a wood
so darkly green, so deafening with birdsong
I stopped my ears.
And that high chime at night,
was it really the stars, or some music
running inside our heads like a dream?
I think we must have been very tired.
I think it must have been a bad broken-off
piece at the start that left us so hungry
we turned back to a path that was gone,
and lost each other, looking.
I called your name over and over again,
and still you did not come.
At night, I was afraid of the black dogs
and often I dreamed you.next to me,
but even then, you were always turning
down the thick corridor of trees.
In daylight, every tree became you.
And pretending, I kissed my way through
the forest, until I stopped pretending
and stumbled, finally, here.
Here too, there are step-parents, and bread
rising, and so many other people
you may not find me at first. They speak
your name, when I speak it.
But I remember you before you became
a story. Sometimes, I feel a thorn in my foot
when there is no thorn. They tell me,
not unkindly, that I should imagine nothing here.
But I believe you are still alive.
I want to tell you about the size of the witch
and how beautiful she is. I want to tell you
the kitchen knives only look friendly,
they have a life of their own,
and that you shouldn’t be sorry,
not for the bread we ate and thought
we wasted, not for the turning back alone,
and that I remember how our shadows walked
always before us, and how that was a clue,
and how there are other clues
that seem like a dream but are not,
and that every day, I am less
and less afraid.
Howe’s poem is kind of heartbreaking. I can almost taste the grief in Gretel’s words, that longing to find her lost brother—every tree in the forest reminding her of Hansel.
My sister Rose was unforgettable, too. She wrote letters to friends and family, even though the doctor told my mom when my sister was born that she would never be able to walk or speak. She did latch hook rugs, even though she barely followed the designs, instead creating her own, Picasso-esque images. She watched movies on repeat—Mama Mia! and Sleeping Beauty and Steel Magnolias, even though she frequently wore out the VHS tapes and DVDs. And Rose had Down syndrome. I put that fact last because, if I put it first, people tend to define her by it. She was much more than her extra chromosome.
The last few years of Rose’s life were a struggle. She suffered from terrible asthma and frequently ended up in the hospital with bouts of pneumonia. During her final hospital stay, she struggled and fought for breath for days. Then, one morning, one of her lungs collapsed. Her body was tired, and she was ready to be with all the people she missed—Mom, Dady, sister Sally, and brother Kevin. The nurses removed her oxygen, and, in the silence that followed, her breathing got quieter and quieter until it ceased altogether.
That winter morning, the sky was pink and orange with the rising sun, as if it knew Rose would soon be coming and wanted to throw her a huge “Welcome Home” party. It was one of the most beautiful and difficult moments of my life. She passed so peacefully that, at first, I didn’t even realize she was gone.
Like Gretel in Howe’s poem, I see Rose everywhere—in the shapes of trees and clouds, taste of Diet Coke on my tongue, melodies of ABBA songs on my playlist. She’s gone, but she’s never been gone.
Saint Marty wrote this poem for Rose tonight . . .
On Your 61st Birthday
by: Martin Achatz
I think of you before gulls
picked your brain clean of words,
when you could still spoon Dairy Queen
ice cream cake to your mouth, or strip
your KFC breast so clean the bones
looked like they belonged in a Georgia
O’Keeffe desert scape. In a photo,
my daughter kneels beside you, my son
hovers behind your chair, and you smile
as if you’ve just discovered how
to smile and can’t wait to share
your discovery with the rest of the world.
I wish there was a museum of your
smiles I could visit today. I’d sit
on a bench in the wing dedicated
to all the smiles you gave me, each
lip and tooth thick and alive
as brushstrokes on a van Gogh canvas,
you know the one with all the screaming
stars and black finger of a tree pointing
heavenward, as if directing me to the cloud
where hosts of seraphs are singing
hosannas to your bright birthday comet.
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