December 12: Mortality, Anointing of the Sick, "Extreme Unction"

Last night's trip to the hospital has got me thinking about mortality again.  How my father never seemed like he was prone to the aches and scourges of everyday people.  I've seen him cut his hand open on a piece of sheet metal, duct tape the wound close, and then continue working.

Last weekend, our parish priest stopped by my dad's house for a visit.  Near the end, Father Larry asked my dad if he wanted to be anointed.  My dad agreed, so Father Larry brought out his oils and performed a ritual that used to be called extreme unction.  It is now referred to as anointing of the sick.

When I was a kid, if you received this sacrament, it meant that you were on your way out.  It was reserved for the nearly dead and dying.  It was also called last rites.  Now, however, it's performed as a ritual of healing.

Of course, having grown up with the idea of last rites, it's difficult to shake the image of the Grim Reaper knocking on the door as the priest administers the oils.

It may not surprise you to know that Saint Marty once wrote a poem on the subject.

Extreme Unction

by:  Martin Achatz


Swaddled by AIDS in hospital bed.
Unlimbed by bombs in Afghanistan.
Unhinged by helix in mind.
Stunned by stroke, macheted by Hutu.
Unbreasted by cancer, unvoiced by dictator.
Addicted by birth, unmemoried by age.
Jack Kennedy at Parkland Memorial,
wide-eyed on the stretcher,
Jackie staring into his wrecked face.
Twenty six at Sandy Hook,
taken on a sunny December morning
just before Christmas break.
My father sits with them all,

The wounded, ruined, helpless,
waits for the priest’s  prayer and oil.
To the man in black, he whispers,
This is for my wife, accepts it,
carries it home on his foreheard,
cupped in his palms, like winter
run-off.  He gives it to my mother,
pours it over her feet, legs, hands, head.
He hopes she will jump out of her chair
and start cooking him liver and onions
the way she did when they were first
married, standing in front of the stove,
singing a Doris Day song, hair wrapped
in a blue kerchief, hips swaying,
looking as if she will live forever.

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December 9: A Cheer Comes Up, Voting Open, Poet Laureate of the U. P.

A cheer comes up from the crowd on the bridge . . .

Yes, the crowd cheers because help has arrived to pump out the basement of a flooded house.

My cheer comes up tonight because the voting has opened for 2017 Poet Laureate of the U. P.  Now, I know there is a way to somehow vote more than once.  I'm not sure how that's done.  But, I'm asking for your support.  (Don't worry.  I'm not going to go all Donald Trump on my competition.  I'm not going to start calling the other nominees "crooked" or start chants to send them to prison.)

In order to help you decide whether to vote for me or not, I will be including one of my original poems every night from now until the voting closes.  If you need your driveway shoveled or a room or your house painted, let me know.

Saint Marty is not good at stuff like this.  He hasn't liked popularity contests since he lost the election for class treasurer when he was in high school.  Enjoy the poem.

Truce, 1914

by:  Martin Achatz

 

Between “Stille Nacht” and “Adeste Fideles,”

they came together in that no man’s

place.  Climbed from the trenches,

eyed each other like distant cousins

at a family reunion.  The German boy

maybe gave the British boy fruitcake

soaked in whiskey because they both

missed their mothers.  Maybe

they showed each other snapshots.

Younger brothers.  Dead grandpas.  Pretty sisters.

They pointed at them.  Said names.

Benjamin.  Opa Franz.  Beatrice.

Candles stuttered in fir trees.

The dead littered the earth,

staring into the dark heavens,

frozen in the violent moment

of payment.  The cost of conflict.

These enemies, these brothers,

helped each other bury

their friends, prayed together.

And peace fell on them that Christmas

Eve like snow.  It was soft.

Quiet.  It felt like

a coming home, where everybody

is happy to see each other

after a long season of separation.

That is what I hold onto

one hundred years later.

That they looked into

each other’s eyes, saw

something familiar, foreign, wondrous:

hope.  Newborn.  Naked.  Fragile

as a mother’s lullaby on a winter’s night.

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December 6: Good-bye, Sad Day, Joy Harjo, "Mourning Song," New Cartoon

"Good-bye!" she whispered.  Then she summoned all her strength and waved one of her legs at him.

The last words Charlotte speaks in the book.  The last action she performs.  A farewell to her best friend, whose life she has just saved.  After this paragraph, she basically disappears.  Retreats from the narrative and dies.  For me, it's the saddest paragraph in Charlotte's Web.

It has been an extremely sad day.  This morning, I attended the funeral for my colleague Ray.  Sixty-six years old.  Father.  Teacher.  Mentor.  Beloved friend.  The mass at Saint Peter's Cathedral was beautiful.  When the choir began singing "Panis Angelicus" at the beginning of the service, I began sobbing.  It went downhill from there.  By the end, I was pretty much a red-eyed, snotty mess, as were all my other friends from the English Department.  There will never be another person like Ray, who truly knew the definition of the word "servant."  He lived to help people.

I'm pretty tired this evening.  Emotionally drained.  In the days to come, I will pick up the pieces of my life in the English Department and move on.  Somehow.  There is a huge, Ray-sized vacuum in the halls and offices.  Today was the end and the beginning.

Joy Harjo has a poem about grieving that I think is appropriate for this evening.  It comes from her book The Woman Who Fell From the Sky.  

Farewell, Ray.  My friend.  I mourn you.  Miss you.  Will never, ever forget the lessons you taught me.

Saint Marty is a better person because of you.

Mourning Song

by:  Joy Harjo

It's early evening in the small world, where gods gamble for good weather as the sky turns red.  Of grief rattling around in the bowl of my skeleton.  How I'd like to spit you out, turn you into another human, or remake the little dog spirit who walked out of our house without its skin toward an unseen land.  We were left behind to figure it out during a harvest turned to ashes.  I need to mourn with the night, turn to the gleaming house of bones under your familiar brown skin.  The hot stone of our hearts will make a fire.  If we cry more tears we will ruin the land with salt; instead let's praise that which would distract us with despair.  Make a song for death, a song with yellow teeth and bad breath.  For loneliness, the house guest who eats everything and refuses to leave.  A song for bad weather so we can stand together under our leaking roof, and make a terrible music with our wise and ragged bones.

Confessions of Saint Marty

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