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"wound and bound together and enflowing"
Feb. 17th, 2013 01:39 pmThe subject line is from May Sarton's first "All Souls" poem [which I wrote about here]. It's been on my mind in part because Mary's been reading Sarton, and in part because it has been a month where news and reminders of losses have been everywhere. One friend lost her grandfather last week; another, her father. At church, a woman held one of her daughters close and lit a candle in memory of the one who died a year ago.
While looking for something else yesterday, I came across an entry I wrote four years ago about witnessing the shutting-down of a body (specifically my mom's). End-of-life issues have been on my mind as well. There is paperwork to be updated, distributed, etc. There is telling friends about http://getyourshittogether.org/ (and checking my own files against its recs).
The day before yesterday, I had elevenses with an elderly couple. She fed me tea in a Tardis mug and strawberries and cookies. The conversation included anecdotes about how different people (don't) handle grief, about giving away books (she has assigned each of her children a color, handed them a package of Post-its, and instructed them to place a sticky inside each book they will want), and about our estate lawyers and the classes they've held at various churches.
And the reminders show up elsewhere as well. At Debi Gliori's blog, belatedly reading her look back at 2012:
There is Dwight Garner describing Maurice Sendak in the New York Times:
So there's all that. But there is also gazing fondly at my dog, who has slowed down considerably this winter but hopped back into the car with great alacrity when I collected her from the vet Friday afternoon. There is reading picture books such as Elsie Piddock Skips in Her Sleep, in which a 100-something woman comes to the rescue of the village in which she grew up. There is a birthday card to make. There are letters to write. There was the tv at Judge Bean's this afternoon--it was showing college cheerleading nationals, and that is fierce stuff. (And watching it with the sound off is ideal for me -- I don't care about the rahs, I just want to admire the moves.) There is the Sunday NYT. There will be the BYM coming home from a business trip. There will be sleeping in tomorrow --if a poem doesn't drag me out of bed to get written, which has happened twice within the past week, but that's okay too. There is so much. Strong skips ahoy!
While looking for something else yesterday, I came across an entry I wrote four years ago about witnessing the shutting-down of a body (specifically my mom's). End-of-life issues have been on my mind as well. There is paperwork to be updated, distributed, etc. There is telling friends about http://getyourshittogether.org/ (and checking my own files against its recs).
The day before yesterday, I had elevenses with an elderly couple. She fed me tea in a Tardis mug and strawberries and cookies. The conversation included anecdotes about how different people (don't) handle grief, about giving away books (she has assigned each of her children a color, handed them a package of Post-its, and instructed them to place a sticky inside each book they will want), and about our estate lawyers and the classes they've held at various churches.
And the reminders show up elsewhere as well. At Debi Gliori's blog, belatedly reading her look back at 2012:
I lost three great and good friends. Lost is such an inadequate word. It implies I laid my friends down and cannot find them. Which, in a way is sort of true, but I would never have chosen to lay them down. Never. And in a strange way, I can find them. Safe in my heart. Beloved.
But, as you can imagine, when the bells ring in the New Year, along with looking towards the future, whatever it may bring, a large part of me is looking backwards, to people I have loved dearly who will not be travelling alongside.
There is Dwight Garner describing Maurice Sendak in the New York Times:
Anyone who's spent time with Sendak's best books--Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen and Nutshell Library among them--knows that [his] querulousness was the salt crust on a deep and complicated well of feeling. He was also the man who said: "I cry a lot because I miss people. They die, and I can't stop them. They leave me, and I love them more."
So there's all that. But there is also gazing fondly at my dog, who has slowed down considerably this winter but hopped back into the car with great alacrity when I collected her from the vet Friday afternoon. There is reading picture books such as Elsie Piddock Skips in Her Sleep, in which a 100-something woman comes to the rescue of the village in which she grew up. There is a birthday card to make. There are letters to write. There was the tv at Judge Bean's this afternoon--it was showing college cheerleading nationals, and that is fierce stuff. (And watching it with the sound off is ideal for me -- I don't care about the rahs, I just want to admire the moves.) There is the Sunday NYT. There will be the BYM coming home from a business trip. There will be sleeping in tomorrow --if a poem doesn't drag me out of bed to get written, which has happened twice within the past week, but that's okay too. There is so much. Strong skips ahoy!
