Nothing monumental transpired. Niceties were exchanged. Polite conversation. What could be said? Gomez's continuing struggles were evident in the expression and manner, in the very setting. He did show Ives the shelf filled with the books that Ives had sent him years ago and spoke appreciatively of what he had done. He was proud of his education and hard work, but what with times being difficult, money was hard to come by. He sometimes looked down at the floor. As for Ives, he left a parting gift for Daniel Gomez to open later, a photograph of his son, Robert, at seventeen.
Danny Gomez is the man who, as a teenager, murdered Ives' son, Robert. Over the years, while Gomez was in prison, Ives sent him letters and books and presents. At the end of the novel, Ives agrees to meet Gomez, as a gesture of healing. Forgiveness. At the end of the meeting, Ives gives Gomez that picture of Robert, young and full of promise. I don't think Ives is trying to be cruel. Quite the opposite. Ives is entrusting to Danny his most precious possession: the memory of his beloved son.
Tonight, I sat down with my siblings to discuss the details of my sister's funeral. It wasn't an easy meeting. Each person had very specific ideas of how our sister's life should be celebrated. One sister, adamant: "She does NOT want to be buried." Another sister, just as adamant: "I want a TRADITIONAL Catholic prayer on the back of her Mass card." A third sister, triply adamant: "I DON'T want that song at the Mass." It was like arranging a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine. Several times, the talks broke down, but, in the end, we hammered out a deal. And tomorrow evening, I will go to the funeral home to make the arrangements.
I understand why emotions were running so high. We all want our particular memories to be honored. I have memories of my sister singing in the church choir. That's why I'm being so stubborn about picking out the hymns and music. That was something I shared with my sister. Something that sort of binds us together in my mind.
Memory is a tricky thing. Mike Madonick captures its slippery nature in the poem below. Memory, he writes, "will not hold." It morphs over time. Mellows. Becomes fuzzy around the edges. In a few years, maybe my recollection of the meeting I had tonight with my sisters will change. Perhaps, thinking back, I'll remember it with laughter. One of my sisters mentioned a company that turns a loved one's cremains into a sculpture. My response: "That's a little creepy. Well, I'm just gonna dust off Sally now."
Tonight, however, Saint Marty feels like he's been through a hostage negotiation, with everybody trying to save their particular memories.
Because the Deer Have Come to Rest
by: Michael David Madonick
The big snow stayed on the ground and rabbits,
for two weeks, tore at the trees, a high watermark,
that years from now we'll point at, say to someone
who cannot help but listen, a grandchild maybe, a
new neighbor,
See here, that was the storm of '99,
the snow stayed for almost a month and the rabbits
ate the bark. I'll forget the wind and maybe the three
starlings that fell asleep on the edge of the chimney
and came down the furnace like pubescent dreamers
into the heat. I'll probably forget the fact the house
got so cold the windows and the door frames arched
with ice and that the dog, though not old enough to
fairly complain, balked at her morning walks. I'll
forget the deadly fear of watching my son, when
the snow started to melt, stand straight under a three-
foot icicle that formed from the roof drain and he took
like some drunk sword-swallower the drops of water
that looked completely benign. I'll forget a lot about
the snow because that is what the snow does, it's
a damper, a tarp, the cheesecloth over the headstone.
But when it all started to melt, when the weird weather
came, in its fog and thunder, and lightning behind it, when
the dog went pulling on her chain from the door because
a rabbit stood stunned on our green front lawn: I'll remember
my wife, who has seen everything, who knows the names
of wildflowers and the odd colors of light that disperse
like magic or pain through sleepless stained glass--I'll
remember my wife standing at our kitchen window looking out
into the field whose white-caps of snow were giving
to green. I'll remember her, her mouth wide open, like
some child at a circus seeing more than she could take in,
I'll remember asking her what she saw and that she said,
The deer are lying down, I've never seen that before. I'll
remember that and that the worst of the snow, and the
starlings, and the dog, and my son under the icicle came
on the day my father was born and it was three months
since he died. I'll remember that there are things that
happen dead in the woods and that only in strange
weather will be given to sight.
It will all go bad. I know that. My memory will not hold, the rabbits
will get slow, my dog will be carried away, and my son will only
remember the ice that falls, the dangers that have come upon him.
But I will know, deeply as the wounded trees--marks are made on a
life, and mine, in '99, because the deer had come to rest.
Adventures of STICKMAN
