July 17: Sister's Birthday, New Poem, "Last Breath," Classic Saint Marty

Today would have been my sister's fifty-fifth birthday.  Last year, she was entering the last month of her life.  The lymphoma was blossoming in her brain, and she could only speak one or two words.  It was a really difficult time.

Last night, I sat down with my journal, intending to record my thoughts about my sister.  Instead I wrote a poem:

Last Breath

for Sally, July 17, 2016

It's been almost a year
since your last breath
pushed out from between
your lips, spread its wings,
took flight, a wet
slap of a sound, almost
like something being born,
full of the salt and blood
of the newly alive, and you
were no longer, were emptiness
with a kind of gravity,
a burned-out building,
a sunken row boat, a shoe
on the side of the road, perhaps
tossed out of a car window
or left behind after an encounter
between two teenagers who thought
they loved each other but found
only a grain of pleasure followed
by fumbles for pants and tee shirts
in the night, a sense that their lives
were shorter, had moved
closer to nothingness, to that last
fist of oxygen in the lungs,
and our mother sat beside
your bed before the Farley brothers
came to take you away, she sat,
talked to you about coffee, the slant
of sun on your face, how
she was glad for your stillness,
and she held your hand,
the way my son holds
the string of a circus balloon,
afraid to let go, see it wheel,
spin away like a goshawk
hunting for rabbits among the stars.

A year ago, I was focusing on happiness.  It's what my sister would have wanted.  Today, I choose to do the same.

July 17, 2015:  Kind of Magnificence, Diamonds on the Soles, Gnomish Fairy Tale, Adrienne Su, "Under the Window"

Annie could not help but hide behind a car like a child, red-faced and laughing, trying her best to smack Ives on the head.  Ives received her shots with joy and mounted his own assault.  Raising his portfolio like a shield, he shouted at the top of his lungs, and, charging toward her, pulled her down into a drift of snow, where they briefly kissed and he felt the first fleeting heat of her tongue.  Then they rested, side by side, on the frigid pavement like dummies, wistfully looking upward at nature's swirling activity.  A kind of magnificence, heaven, as it were, coming down on them.

A really joyful passage from the book.  A young Ives and Annie, just getting to know each other.  They let go of all their cares and worries and simply behave like kids, throwing snowballs at each other, tackling each other in the wintery night.  It's one of those rare life moments:  complete and total happiness.  All their future pain and sadness not even a shadow on the radar of their lives.

Driving home from work this afternoon, I had a moment like that with a friend.  We had the windows of my car rolled down, and Paul Simon's album, Graceland, cranked on my CD player.  The wind was cool.  The sun was bright.  We cruised along and sang at the top of our lungs:  "She's got diamonds on the soles of her shoes....Diamonds on the soles of her shoes...."  It felt so good.

Tonight, I will not focus on my sister's illness.  It's her birthday.  Instead of talking about her chemotherapy or inability to speak, I choose to think of her in better times.  Camping in her trailer on a July weekend.  Swimming in the pool or lounging by the hot tub.  At night, listening to Garrison Keillor on the radio around the campfire.  Those are the memories I am going to celebrate.

We had cake tonight for my sister.  Called and sang to her.  The cake was yellow and chocolate, covered with chocolate frosting and a thick layer of sprinkles.  It was really good.  I know she would have enjoyed it.  A lot.

Tonight, when I get home, I'm going to continue the happiness.  After I clean the bathroom, listening to ABBA music (my sister's favorite), I will sit on the couch and read a good book.  Maybe I'll put on an episode of Kolchak the Night Stalker, one of her favorite TV shows when we were kids.  The only rule for the evening:  no sadness invited.

Once upon a time, in a dark forest, lived a dark little gnome named Marvin.  Marvin was known far and wide as the saddest person in the gnome kingdom.  While the other gnomes got naked and danced in the moonlight, Marvin sat in his burrow and worried about the color of the mole on his stomach.

One day, a beautiful little gnome name Bertha knocked on Marvin's door.  When he answered, Bertha said, "Marvin, I love you.  Would you take my hand and dance the dance of wedlock in the daffodils with me?"

Marvin shook his head.  "I can't dance.  Bad ankles."

Bertha persisted.  "Would you go down to the waterfall and swim in Love Lake with me?"

Marvin shook his head.  "I don't know how to swim."

Bertha tried again.  "Would you come out of your burrow and sit in the pines with me?"

"I can't," Marvin said.  "I'm allergic to bug bites and tree sap."

Bertha tried one more time.  "Marvin, will you kiss me in the gnomish way right now?"

Marvin said, "I don't have any gnomedems for protection."

Bertha went away, and Marvin closed his door and lived the rest of his life in complete darkness, never knowing a single minute of joy.

Moral of the story:  Girl gnomes are tramps.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

Under the Window

by:  Adrienne Su

Day and night in the green hospital
the woman whose name means Fortunate Jade
grows smaller.  Her son forgets

more Chinese with every visit.
He sits by the bed and cries tearlessly.
He is fifteen and remembers his birthplace

as the sputter of its two taxis,
chickens in a wire box, deep-fried
oysters, and guttural speech.

Even in health, his mother looked
small in the supermarket aisles.

She hated the food; she said the people
were dumb as animals.  For the last

year, her flesh has been slowly
making its way back to China.

Her son does not tell her
she is still beautiful
even though he knows the words.

He rearranges the camellias,
asks her if she wants TV.
He jumps up, sits down, changes

the water in her glass.  He is in love
for the first time and can't talk
about it in any language.

This is the boy she prayed for,
implored all the gods,
even the foreign one, to deliver.

He arrived with a clear cry,
the first son of his generation.
The house filled with blessings

and fat red envelopes.  Her husband
found work in America, where
they learned to drive cars--

and now this.  Perhaps it was ill luck,
a bad ancestor, the nameless daughter
she had prayed out of existence.

It could be the water
from the strange pipes
or the foul teas she'd sipped

to turn the not-yet child
into a boy.  It could be
the songs she had crooned

to her belly, not thinking
of the unblessed rice paddies,
the slighted earth, the moon

that now glared into her window
through each night, saying,
You will not sleep.  You will not sleep.

Bertha, you ignorant slut!

July 18: Great Numbness, Situational Depression, Adrienne Su, "Elegy," New Cartoon

He [Ives] went to church and prayed for guidance, begging God to bring forgiveness into his heart.  He would kneel before the creche, the crucifix, and wonder how and why all these things had happened.  At night he would dream of black threads twisting in the air and slipping into his body from afar.  Though he bowed his head and trembled at the funeral, though he spoke kindly with the priests and repeated to himself a thousand times that God was good and that the manifestations of evil that come to men are ultimately explicable in some divine way.  His wisdom greater than what any of them would ever know, Ives felt a great numbness descending over him.

Yeah, I get what Ives is going through in this passage.  In the face of incredible loss, Ives has to remind himself of God's goodness.  It is the beginning of Ives' decade-long battle with depression, that great numbness that takes over his being.  Ives holds onto his belief in God's wisdom and goodness, despite the ever-present darkness of mental illness.

I have been waging a little battle myself this summer with the great numbness.  It's easier to see God's wisdom and goodness when I'm busy, around other people.  When I'm working or worshiping or cleaning my house, the dark thoughts are held in check.  When I'm by myself, trying to read or pray or write, they come charging back like a pack of feral dogs.

My therapist would probably call this situational depression.  I'm not sure when situational depression transitions into full-blown depression.  It's not like I'm curled up on my couch under a blanket, crying uncontrollably.  Unless I become a completely nonfunctional piece of clay, I won't worry.

I actually think I'm going to try to write a poem for my sister.  Sometimes, when I'm dealing with difficult emotional situations, I find sitting down with my journal and pen cathartic.  When my brother passed away last year, writing his elegy really helped me deal with the loss.  Tonight, after I help my daughter pack for Bible camp, I may sit down on my couch and have a night of poetry.

When I was writing my brother's elegy, I struggled for days.  I couldn't come up with a way to communicate my emotions, which were all over the place.  I'm sort of in the same spot with my sister right now.  Hope mixed with sadness mixed with anger mixed with grief.  I'm not sure what kind of poem is going to come out of me.

Or maybe Saint Marty will just pick up some wine coolers, sit on my couch, watch The Lawrence Welk Show, and drink himself into a different kind of numbness.

Elegy

by:  Adrienne Su

You said the last word with your last
breath and I was not there to bury
it.  You spent your life writing
the note and intended
to go alone; you knew what
to say but poof! you were out

of breath--the night went out,
the chills passed, the last
gesture stopped.  What
took a little longer was to bury
you.  Everyone thought you intended
to stay; you were writing

me letters and though I wasn't writing
back, you said you had risen out
of despair and intended
to forget the last
ten years, in which you had buried
so many skeletons you didn't know what

you were born for.  Anyway.  What
you didn't count on was writing
the note, dying, and no one coming to bury
you.  The police didn't check out
the shed until the last
of the month; they intended

to go home by dark, then opened your untended
grave at dinnertime.  What
gets me is not that I was your last
woman, not that I was off writing
term papers when you walked yourself out
of the world, not even that they'd bury

you and not invite me, but that you buried
your body where you intended
to be found and were sniffed out
belatedly, faceless, unmanly.  What-
ever threw that wrench, I'm writing
you out of my memory as fast

as I can.  That last word's been buried
but it's in your handwriting.  You intended
to get what you got.  Now get out.

Confessions of Saint Marty

July 17: Kind of Magnificence, Diamonds on the Soles, Gnomish Fairy Tail, Adrienne Su, "Under the Window"

Annie could not help but hide behind a car like a child, red-faced and laughing, trying her best to smack Ives on the head.  Ives received her shots with joy and mounted his own assault.  Raising his portfolio like a shield, he shouted at the top of his lungs, and, charging toward her, pulled her down into a drift of snow, where they briefly kissed and he felt the first fleeting heat of her tongue.  Then they rested, side by side, on the frigid pavement like dummies, wistfully looking upward at nature's swirling activity.  A kind of magnificence, heaven, as it were, coming down on them.

A really joyful passage from the book.  A young Ives and Annie, just getting to know each other.  They let go of all their cares and worries and simply behave like kids, throwing snowballs at each other, tackling each other in the wintery night.  It's one of those rare life moments:  complete and total happiness.  All their future pain and sadness not even a shadow on the radar of their lives.

Driving home from work this afternoon, I had a moment like that with a friend.  We had the windows of my car rolled down, and Paul Simon's album, Graceland, cranked on my CD player.  The wind was cool.  The sun was bright.  We cruised along and sang at the top of our lungs:  "She's got diamonds on the soles of her shoes....Diamonds on the soles of her shoes...."  It felt so good.

Tonight, I will not focus on my sister's illness.  It's her birthday.  Instead of talking about her chemotherapy or inability to speak, I choose to think of her in better times.  Camping in her trailer on a July weekend.  Swimming in the pool or lounging by the hot tub.  At night, listening to Garrison Keillor on the radio around the campfire.  Those are the memories I am going to celebrate.

We had cake tonight for my sister.  Called and sang to her.  The cake was yellow and chocolate, covered with chocolate frosting and a thick layer of sprinkles.  It was really good.  I know she would have enjoyed it.  A lot.

Tonight, when I get home, I'm going to continue the happiness.  After I clean the bathroom, listening to ABBA music (my sister's favorite), I will sit on the couch and read a good book.  Maybe I'll put on an episode of Kolchak the Night Stalker, one of her favorite TV shows when we were kids.  The only rule for the evening:  no sadness invited.

Once upon a time, in a dark forest, lived a dark little gnome named Marvin.  Marvin was known far and wide as the saddest person in the gnome kingdom.  While the other gnomes got naked and danced in the moonlight, Marvin sat in his burrow and worried about the color of the mole on his stomach.

One day, a beautiful little gnome name Bertha knocked on Marvin's door.  When he answered, Bertha said, "Marvin, I love you.  Would you take my hand and dance the dance of wedlock in the daffodils with me?"

Marvin shook his head.  "I can't dance.  Bad ankles."

Bertha persisted.  "Would you go down to the waterfall and swim in Love Lake with me?"

Marvin shook his head.  "I don't know how to swim."

Bertha tried again.  "Would you come out of your burrow and sit in the pines with me?"

"I can't," Marvin said.  "I'm allergic to bug bites and tree sap."

Bertha tried one more time.  "Marvin, will you kiss me in the gnomish way right now?"

Marvin said, "I don't have any gnomedems for protection."

Bertha went away, and Marvin closed his door and lived the rest of his life in complete darkness, never knowing a single minute of joy.

Moral of the story:  Girl gnomes are tramps.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

Under the Window

by:  Adrienne Su

Day and night in the green hospital
the woman whose name means Fortunate Jade
grows smaller.  Her son forgets

more Chinese with every visit.
He sits by the bed and cries tearlessly.
He is fifteen and remembers his birthplace

as the sputter of its two taxis,
chickens in a wire box, deep-fried
oysters, and guttural speech.

Even in health, his mother looked
small in the supermarket aisles.

She hated the food; she said the people
were dumb as animals.  For the last

year, her flesh has been slowly
making its way back to China.

Her son does not tell her
she is still beautiful
even though he knows the words.

He rearranges the camellias,
asks her if she wants TV.
He jumps up, sits down, changes

the water in her glass.  He is in love
for the first time and can't talk
about it in any language.

This is the boy she prayed for,
implored all the gods,
even the foreign one, to deliver.

He arrived with a clear cry,
the first son of his generation.
The house filled with blessings

and fat red envelopes.  Her husband
found work in America, where
they learned to drive cars--

and now this.  Perhaps it was ill luck,
a bad ancestor, the nameless daughter
she had prayed out of existence.

It cold be the water
from the strange pipes
or the foul teas she'd sipped

to turn the not-yet child
into a boy.  It could be
the songs she had crooned

to her belly, not thinking
of the unblessed rice paddies,
the slighted earth, the moon

that now glared into her window
through each night, saying,
You will not sleep.  You will not sleep.

Bertha, you ignorant slut!

July 16: Two Homes, Plan of Treatment, Adrienne Su, "Home"

He [Ives] would watch his son nod and think and think and think, contemplating the things he'd heard and looking around the church as if he were waiting for the statues to move, for the Christ to come down off the Cross.  He'd remember how the boy had always loved all of that from the very beginning, that he had, in some sense, two homes:  their apartment and the church.

Ives lived the first years of his life in a foundling home.  If Mr. Ives' Christmas had been written by Charles Dickens, Ives would have been Oliver Twist, begging for gruel in an orphanage, dreaming of having a mother and father.  A home.  Robert, Ive's son, is luckier than his father was.  Robert knows the safety and comfort of loving parents, a stable family, and a nurturing spiritual faith.  Robert is always home, wherever he happens to be.

My sister's doctors outlined a plan of treatment yesterday for her.  It involves a lengthy course of chemotherapy.  The problem is that the treatment is only available at the University of Michigan and another hospital in the lower peninsula.  She will have to live in a long-term care facility downstate for over a year.  There are quite a few other "ifs" involved.  If the chemo doesn't kill her.  If she responds well to the treatment.  If she doesn't develop other life-threatening infections (she's had a lot of them over the past year).  If the tumors in her head shrink and/or disappear.

If all of these ifs happen, my sister may be able to return to a nursing home in the Upper Peninsula, closer to home.  She is never going to be the person she was.  More than once, doctors have said that the atrophy in her brain is permanent.  She will never work again.  Or drive a car.  Or boss me around.  Or bake her Christmas pizelle cookies.  Or play Zombie Dice on my iPad.  She may never even speak again.

Last night, as I listened to my other sister outline the treatment plan, someone asked her, "Does Sally understand what's happening?"  My sister said, "All she wants is to come home."

That's incredibly difficult for me to hear, because I know she will never come home the way she wants to.  Her life, however long that life will be, is going to be spent in nursing homes.  That is a fact.  A difficult fact.

I'm really conflicted tonight.  I want my sister to live, but I don't want my sister to spend the rest of her time on this planet yearning for something she will never have again:  a home where she can walk and talk and laugh and watch TV and blow out birthday candles.

Saint Marty's home might need a roof and a kitchen ceiling and new front steps and an extra bedroom.  But Saint Marty has a home.

Home

by:  Adrienne Su

It is a long way back,
more than a drive
from dawn to the black
hours.  It is five

thousand days to a sky-blue
summer of swelling
and pain, in which two
sisters stopped telling

their secrets.  It means
restoring a dead man
to his office to dream
and tally, and a woman

to a classroom full
of girls, whom she orders
into the hall
and orders

to stop crying.
It's not just that,
either; a dying
uncle must come back

to his bed in the city,
Chinese be forgotten,
and four pretty
faces erased.  Often

I wake under the high
ceiling and can't
remember why
I'm here, and want

to die.  Then years
of memory revive
noisily, in clear
focus, but my life

isn't mine.  One
of the girls in the hall
has stopped and undone
her hair, which falls

generously down
her back all the way
to the floor.  Her round
shoulders are bare.  A

moment later, so is
her back.  Her legs
are bare.  She is
laughing, and the next

instant there's no girl
to speak of,
just the door and the hall
she's walked out of.

WWMTD--What would Mother Teresa do?

July 14: Eerie Shadows, Teeth Grinding, Adrienne Su, "Antidepressant"

...One night, while working late, Ives, in his fatigue, staggered out to Madison Avenue:  for as far as he could see, the office buildings were casting eerie shadows, and he felt the world a lonely and dreadful place.  He often awoke with a gasp in the middle of the night, his heartbeat accelerated, his breathing shallow, his heart filled with sadness, his head with memory.

After his son is killed, Ives has trouble sleeping.  Nightmares.  Scratching his arms and legs bloody.  And sadness, tremendous sadness.  Ives feels cheated.  His son, his good and devout son, has been taken away from him.  God hasn't played fair.

Some news from the University of Michigan this morning:  the brain biopsy has confirmed that my sister has lymphoma of the brain.  The neurologist and oncologist are discussing treatment options, including chemotherapy and radiation.  The question is whether or not my sister can survive the treatments.

Recently, I've been having trouble sleeping.  I wake up in the morning, and my jaw hurts.  I've never been a teeth grinder before.  This summer, I'm worried that I'm going to fracture my molars or bicuspids or canines.  I went to the dentist a little over a month-and-a-half ago.  He confirmed the grinding and told me to take ibuprofen and not chew with my back teeth.  For a while, that did the trick.  The last couple of weeks, however, have been a test, and my mouth is failing.

Of course, it's all about stress, and I feel stupid complaining about sore teeth when my sister is fighting for her life.  Like Ives, I don't think God is playing fair.  My sister deserves better.  I will put up with some cracked teeth if my sister will live to see my son graduate from high school.

Saint Marty doesn't need Zoloft.  He needs a miracle for his sister.

Antidepressant

by:  Adrienne Su

The purple pill rattles
out of its bottle,

makes my hands therefore my pen
shake, cloaks me in thirteen

layers of delusionary fur,
stunts my walk, and blurs

each stark moment so it won't
be so stark.  At last I don't

know what time it is
sometimes.  I like this

effect all right, although
I'm still sad.  Night goes

too fast, bringing sun,
whose brash light comes

unwanted into each crevice
of the apartment.  This

could be a matter of life
circumstance and pills might

be the wrong fix, but I know
things won't change if I go

to Spain or take up fencing.
I'd be the same wincing

Adrienne, only armed
or in Spain.  What harm

in staying by the window
to think, wish, swallow

pellets of hope, and not eat?
I'm not unrequited, don't need

company, haven't lost friend
or family.  I just tend

to be a sick plant,
and no antidepressant

can shield me from the sun's
burning; leaves drop one

by one to the sill.  I'll win
my war yet.  My angel isn't

dead, just lost on the moon
or snowed in, gone but soon

to come, nudged out of sight
by another sleep's night.

I like it sprinkled on my Cheerios in the morning

July 13: Writing Contests, Possibility, "Ives" Dip, Poet of the Week, Adrienne Su, "The Word Was My First Companion"

My mind is a blank page at the moment.  I'm still very tired from the events of the weekend.  After I'm done typing this post, I have to go through my binder of poems and put together a packet to submit to a contest.  After that, I am going to try to catch up on some sleep.

Sometimes, I wonder why I enter writing contests.  The last time I won a big prize was when I was a freshman in high school.  I wrote an essay for a contest sponsored by the VFW.  I went to the local radio station, recorded the essay, and didn't think about it again until I won first place on the local level.  Then I won first place on the district level.  Then, at a huge banquet in Lansing, I won first place in the state.  For the next year, I read that essay across the Upper Peninsula, appeared on TV, and got used to being a local celebrity.

That's it.  My fifteen minutes of fame.  Since that time, I have placed second or third in every contest I've entered.  This weekend, I placed fourth in my age group for the race I ran.  That's about the best I can do.  Yet, I'm still going to enter that poetry contest tonight.  Not because I think I'm going to win.  I'm entering because I choose to live in hope instead of defeat.  By entering the contest, I am saying that I believe in myself.  I believe in possibility.

I believe I might win the poetry contest.  I believe I might get a full-time teaching job at the university.  I believe my sister might get better at the University of Michigan hospital.  I believe in mights.

My question for Ives dip Monday is this:

Might I win the poetry contest I'm going to enter tonight?

And the answer from Edward Ives is:

In one slip of a second, anything seemed possible--had the moon risen and started to sing, had pyramids appeared over the Chrysler building weeping, Ives would have been no more surprised.

There you have it.  Anything is possible.  Singing moons.  Weeping pyramids.  Me winning first place in a prestigious poetry contest.

Adrienne Su is the featured Poet of the Week on Saint Marty.  Her collection, Middle Kingdom, has been on my shelf for quite a few years.  Every once in a while, I take it down, open it up, and find myself in its pages.  No, I'm not a young, talented Asian American woman poet.  I'm saying that I live in the possibility I could be a young, talented Asian American woman poet.

Hey, Saint Marty can dream, right?

The Word Was My First Companion

by:  Adrienne Su

In the flickering suburban night,
Not yet acquainted with the name of the feeling,
I did not dream, but commonly imagined

My future as a teacher or journalist
Not thinking to address
Whether there would be a man.

My family would always speak the same language,
In no way turn alien to one another,
And there would never be a poisonous city

Where people demanded psychic space.
There would be no violations,
Only the rules.  There would be no urge

To walk into an unknown cathedral & disappear.
We'd stick tight as a cocoon,
And there being more books in the world

Than I could read in a lifetime
(And no such thing as the slow
Silent robbery of that lifetime),

It would always be like this moment,
Me and the blank page, hugged by night,
Planning the grammatical future.

My famous cousin, Grant.  His picture pops up when I Google my name.  I'm almost famous.