February 1: "The First Time Percy Came Back," One Year Since, My Sister

Mary Oliver has a vision . . .

The First Time Percy Came Back

by Mary Oliver

The first time Percy came back

he was not sailing on a cloud.

He was loping along the sand as though

he had come a great way.

"Percy," I cried out, and reached to him--

     those white curls--

but he was unreachable.  As music

is present yet you can't touch it.

"Yes, it's all different," he said.

"You're going to be very surprised."

But I wasn't thinking of that.  I only 

wanted to hold him.  "Listen," he said,

"I miss that too.

And now you'll be telling stories

     of my coming back

and they won't be false, and they won't be true,

but they'll be real."

And then, as he used to, he said, "Let's go!"

And we walked down the beach together.

I have been struggling these last days.  Distracted.  Sad.  Too exhausted every night to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.  That's why I've been doing these catchup blog posts well past the dates they should have been written and shared.

Just a few days ago, I realized that it has been one year since my sister, Rose, died.  Somehow, my body and brain knew it, I think, without it being consciously at the forefront of my thoughts.  That is why I've been having such a hard time stringing together words into sentences these last ten or so days.

So, I'm going to tell you a story.

A long time ago (okay, about a year ago), in a galaxy far, far away (okay, it was actually at my house) . . .

My sister, Rose, had died a few days before.  I was in the hospital room when she breathed her last breaths.  Without question, I knew that she was gone.

I am a person who frequently suffers from insomnia.  When I should be in bed, I am usually awake--writing poetry or blog posts, binging The X-Files, or searching my shelves for a specific volume that I absolutely need to have immediately.  You get the idea.

On this particular night, I was lying on the couch, watching something on TV.  Probably a movie that I'd seen many, many times before.  I may have dozed off.  I'm not sure.  The next thing I know, my sister, Rose, was standing by my Christmas tree.  (Yes, I leave my Christmas tree up a long time.  If you have a problem with that, please submit a written complaint in triplicate to the Department of Eat My Ass.)

There Rose was, but not the way she was at the end of her life.  In the last few years before she died, Rose had lost a lot of things--her memory, speech, ability to walk by herself.  It's a well-worn metaphor, but it's an apt one here:  Rose was a shell of her former self.

The Rose that was standing in my living room that night was young and strong.  My sister was always tiny, less than five feet.  Yet, she could arm wrestle with the best in her prime.  Kids who teased her in school or on the playground for being a "retard" often found themselves flat on their backs, gasping for air.  That was the Rose I saw that night.  The Rose who could take care of herself.

As I said a couple paragraphs ago, I may have fallen asleep, but Rose was like the music Oliver describes in the poem--present, and yet I couldn't touch her.  I waited to see if she was going to say anything.  She didn't.  What I got instead was a steady gaze and a smile, as if she had shone up to tell me a joke or ask me for a Diet Coke (her favorite).

It lasted only a few seconds.  Or a lifetime.  I closed my eyes and shook my head.  When I opened my eyes again, she was gone.

Again, I'm not sure if I was awake or asleep.  I know that I'd been working on the poem I was going to read for Rose's funeral right before this happened.  For those of my disciples who don't believe in angels or ghosts or an afterlife, chalk Rose's appearance up to an exhausted, grief-stricken brother's mind.  And for those of my disciples who are open to mystery without the need for explanation, chalk it up to my sister's loving spirit that wanted me to know that she was alright.  Happy.  Whole.

Is this a false story?  Is it true?  Yes and yes, I suppose, depending on your belief system.  Is it real?

As sure as Saint Marty loves tapioca pudding.

October 9: Lovely Trip, Wisconsin Dells, Eric Torgersen, :"What Is Your Earliest Memory?," Adventures of Stickman

It had been a lovely trip, London everything they had wanted and imagined--for Annie, reading selections from several Dickens novels at the time, it was an enchantment, they took strolls through the Queen's gardens, fed the swans in Regents Park; tried to envision the shantytowns that Dickens had once written about, along the Thames, the city's architecture sometimes suspending their notion of modern time...

After years of depression and struggle, Ives and his wife, Annie, go on a trip to the British Isles.  London, especially.  Annie loves the words of Dickens, and Ives loves the work of artists like Seymour and Cruikshank, the first illustrators of Dickens' work.  Ives and Annie rekindle their love on this journey.  It gives them a fresh start.

Greetings from the Wisconsin Dells.  We arrived around 4 p.m.  The journey was unremarkable.  We didn't get lost once, the weather was sunny and cool.  This trip was the first we've made to the Kalahari Resort without the navigating skills of my sister, who couldn't come because of work conflicts.

This evening, I have been to an indoor amusement park and water park.  My son dragged me up to the top of several water slides.  My feet are sore, and I can still smell chlorine.  My wife just fell asleep, and my kids passed out about an hour ago.  After I am done with this post, I will be calling it a night, as well.

Just like Ives, I've needed this time away from my day-to-day existence.  Since the beginning of the semester, I've felt a little distracted, at the medical office and university.  Perhaps it's the stress of the summer finally catching up with me.  Or maybe it's grief.  I don't know.  Whatever the cause, I have not really been fully myself.  Perhaps these few days away will heal what's ailing me.

There will be no fairy tale this evening.  I'm taking a vacation from that, as well.

I do have a poem, however.  It's about memory, and fragility of time, things I've been thinking about a lot this past month.

Saint Marty is hoping to make a few happy memories over the next few days.  This year hasn't provided a whole lot of those.

What Is Your Earliest Memory?  What
Does It Mean?

by:  Eric Torgersen

Barbara the earliest thing I remember
is pushing a train of wooden blocks
sawed off the ends of two-by-fours
around the top of the concrete foundation
of the house my mother and father built
up Lyons Street at the end of the war.

It means we really were all there
together once, my father and mother,
my house, my brother and I,
my three sisters one after the other.

The foundation was a foundation
to hold up my little train
and I was a block on my brother
and sister and sister and sister.

I remember a little while later
my mother on the roof with a hammer.

The roof was a roof over our heads
but the house was never whole:
the bathroom no more than a shell,
around the back no shingles,
in the front yeard a big stump
we had no one to dig up and haul.
We cut and tunneled and burned but the stump
was bigger than all of us together.

The stump was the stump of a tree
I can't remember.  The tree was my father.

Adventures of STICKMAN