August 18: "Morning Glories," Poet Friend, Hospice

Mary Oliver loves weeds . . . 

Morning Glories

by:  Mary Oliver

Blue and dark-blue

     rose and deepest rose

          white and pink they

are everywhere in the diligent

     cornfield rising and swaying

          in their reliable

finery in the little

     fling of their bodies their

          gear and tackle

all caught up in the cornstalks.

     The reaper's story is the story

          of endless work of

work careful and heavy but the

     reaper cannot

          separate them out there they

are in the story of his life

     bright random useless

          year after year

taken with the serious tons

     weeds without value humorous

          beautiful weeds.

Oliver sees worth in everything, including noxious weeds.  The morning glories in this poem are also called bindweed, and they are definitely not welcome additions to any farm field or garden.  Yet, they're vibrant and gorgeous.  As Oliver writes, blue and dark-blue, rose and deepest rose, pink and white, they are everywhere.  Common and beautiful.

I want to tell you about a poet friend of mine.  Her name is Rosalie.

I've known Rosalie for over 30 years.  We went to graduate school together.  At the time, I thought I was going to be the next Flannery O'Connor, studying fiction writing while Rosalie was already writing and publishing poems.  I never had a doubt that she was going to make a name for herself as a poet.  Her work was heartbreaking and beautiful even back then.

Being a graduate student is a strange experience--a mixture of attending Hogwarts and Crunchem Hall Primary School from Matilda.  There's magical moments (a class in Modern Women Poets, a poetry reading by Maya Angelou) and painful moments (postmodern literary theory, anyone?).  And you're part of a band of misfits.  Poets.  Novelists.  Short story writers.  Essayists.  If you survive, you're guaranteed to have PTDS--post-traumatic Derrida syndrome.  (That's a really funny joke if you are/were an English major.)

I found out this afternoon that Rosalie is currently in hospice care.  I'm not going to go into the details of her illness.  That's not my story to tell.  Her daughter, whom I've known since she was an infant, is caring for Rosalie at home.

So, I'm sitting here tonight, thinking of the classes I took with Rosalie.  The shared stress of teaching composition to groups of surly freshman who didn't know comma splices from comma faults.  (If you don't know, look it up.)  The laughter and tears we shared.  And, always, the writing.  Her poems.  My short stories.  

Tragedy is common as noxious weeds.  It's everywhere, sprouting and thriving.  Is there beauty in tragedy?  Perhaps.  Speaking from experience, having a loved one in hospice is like distilling life down to its most necessary and important elements.  I've had the privilege of being in the room when two of my sisters, my father, and my mother have died.  Yes, it was a privilege to be able to hold their hands, tell them how much they were loved, and witness those last breaths that seemed almost like sighs of relief after long and winding roads.  And then the peace that followed.

Of course, loss is painful, too.  Always.  Especially when it involves someone as relatively young as Rosalie.  It's not easy to find beauty when you are in the weeds of grief.  Yet, in Rosalie's final struggle, there is love.  Deep, abiding, multiplying love.

Tonight, I raise my poet friend up to all of you.  Remember her, if you have a moment.  Know that she is a beautiful soul, on the cusp of blossoming into eternity.  Say her name like a prayer.  Give it breath.  

Rosalie.

Saint Marty is going to let his friend have the last word tonight . . . 

Before Leaving

by:  Rosalie Sanara Petrouske

I climb black rocks with my daughter,

who scrambles ahead.

Close behind, I'm ready to reach out

should she stumble on the uneven surface.

At the top, we stare out at Superior,

breathing in the peace of lake and sky.

Below, a few waves crest white,

then lap

the million-year-old ledge beneath us.

On a far shore, sugar maple, hemlock, balsam fir

and white pine cover the island and grow down sides

of distant outcroppings.

Pairs of seagulls rise from the Bon Rocks.

They lift and circle,

           dip and glide.

To the West, I point out Hogsback

and Sugarloaf, remnants of ancient glaciers.

Near us, a group of college students gather.

We watch as they leap from the highest point

to plummet into icy water.

This ritual repeats year after year.

Perhaps, I think, one day my daughter will dive

from this cliff into Superior's silvery-blue.

Her breath will catch when she rises

and gulps warm air,

yet her heart will beat again

when she discovers

effortless, she can fall and still rise.

For now, we simply sit side by side.

Sun warms our shoulder blades

and dampness gathers in the hollows

of our necks

where tendrils of hair separate to expose

skin to mid-afternoon light.

I tell her this place, this moment will always be part of us--

its mantra will call to us when we close our eyes

and still hear lake sounds, as if someone placed

a seashell against our ears.

We will carry it inside.

"Inside here?" she asks.

She places a hand across her chest.

Reaching, I take her other hand.

I squeeze, but she pulls away.

            "Don't hold so tightly," she says.

August 24: A Good Friend, Poet of the Week, Wendell Berry, "Only His Hands, Quiet on the Sheet," "Ives" Dip, Adventures of Stickman

A couple of days ago, a good friend sent me a Wendell Berry poem after he heard of my sister's death.  My friend thought it would comfort me.  He was right.  It did.

When my siblings decided to bring my sister back to my parents' house under hospice care, I was opposed to the idea.  Strongly opposed.  I wanted her to go to a nursing home under hospice care.  I didn't think my sister with Down Syndrome could handle it, and my mother is very confused.  I also wasn't sure I wanted my kids watching my sister die.  All I could picture were days of suffering and tears.

In retrospect, I know now that I was wrong.  The last days of my sister's life were peaceful and happy.  She was able to speak a little.  Smile.  In her last days, I think she was really happy.

That's what Wendell Berry's poem brought home to me, and that's why Wendell Berry is the Poet of the Week.  Here is the poem my friend sent to me . . .

Only His Hands, Quiet of the Sheet

by  Wendell Berry

Three Elegaic Poems

I.
 
Let him escape hospital and doctor,
the manners and odors of strange places,
the dispassionate skills of experts.

Let him go free of tubes and needles,
public corridors, the surgical white
of life dwindled to poor pain.

Foreseeing the possibility of life without
possibility of joy, let him give it up.

Let him die in one of the old rooms
of his living, no stranger near him.

Let him go in peace out of the bodies
of his life –
flesh and marriage and household.

From the wide vision of his own windows
let him go out of sight; and the final

time and light of his life’s place be
last seen before his eyes’ slow
opening in the earth.

Let him go like one familiar with the way
into the wooded and tracked and
furrowed hill, his body.

II.

I stand at the cistern in front of the old barn
in the darkness, in the dead of winter,
the night strangely warm, the wind blowing,
rattling an unlatched door.
I draw the cold water up out of the ground, and drink.

At the house the light is still waiting.
An old man I’ve loved all my life is dying
in his bed there. He is going
slowly down from himself.
In final obedience to his life, he follows
his body out of our knowing.
Only his hands, quiet on the sheet, keep
a painful resemblance to what they no longer are.

III.

He goes free of the earth.
The sun of his last day sets
clear in the sweetness of his liberty.

The earth recovers from his dying,
the hallow of his life remaining
in all his death leaves.

Radiances know him. Grown lighter
than breath, he is set free
in our remembering. Grown brighter

than vision, he goes dark
into the life of the hill
that holds his peace.

He’s hidden among all that is,
and cannot be lost.

I miss my sister.  A lot.  I regret that I didn't visit her more this past year.  To be honest, I always thought that she was going to get better.  Up until a month ago, I still held on to that hope.  Her dying simply wasn't an alternative.  I couldn't and wouldn't accept it.

And now, I feel like I'm stuck in tar, and everybody else is moving on to higher ground.  It sort of pisses me off.  I'm walking hand-in-hand with grief.  My sister--the one I worked day-in and day-out with for 17 years--is dead.  I'm not ready for the world to keep spinning.  At least not for a few more days.

I started teaching again today.  Usually, I'm happy to get back in the classroom after a long summer.  This afternoon, however, I was performing.  Playing the part of the happy, wise-cracking professor.  The students bought it all.  Inside, all that kept going through my head was:  "None of this is important."  At the end of life, God's not going to care if you know the difference between a comma splice and a gene splice.

My question this Ives dip Monday:

Was my sister happy at the end of her life?

And the answer:

The phonograph music would fill the living room, and she would find her head turning and digging deep into the easy-chair headrest in rhythm to the beat, as if she were a 1940s bobby-soxer, and she would daydream about the time when Robert had used their living room as a rehearsal studio for a kind of jazz group he put together with kids from the neighborhood.  Some knew what they were doing, others didn't, and the neighbors knew it too.  During those sessions he played a snare drum with brushes and foot-tapped a high hat and felt so honored, so formal about jazz, despite his ecclesiastical training, that he used to shine his penny loafter and put on a tie before playing.

That's Annie Ives thinking about a happy moment in her son's life.  A time when Robert really was joyful, playing in a jazz band with his friends.

Saint Marty will take that answer as a "yes."  His sister was happy at the end of her life.

Adventures of STICKMAN