Tuesday

17 October 2017

— looking out at my freshly weeded flower beds, two hours, thank you very much.

Good Morning All,

Some mornings my e-mail box contains a perfect plum or two. Such as this morning:

Sorry for the delay in my 2nd amendment survey response. I enjoy your Day Books and quizzes but don't keep up with them daily. I noticed I had missed the survey by catching some references in later missives. But I do want to share with you how powerful I've found your reflections on Britta's passing to be. So moving, in fact, I haven't known how to respond. Your sense of loss is so deep and so eloquently expressed. I'm just left reflecting on how much I would miss (spouse’s name) were I in your shoes … So thank you for laying it all out there - sharing the sadness that comes from having lost the most important part of your life. Thank heavens for Holly and Johs - and, it seems, Britta's sibs - for keeping that connection alive. 

I wrote back instantaneously:

Thanks so much for this! I sometimes worry I annoy people by writing about Britta so much, not least about the loss of her.

You are correct in your surmise that one reason I do so is to let  (remind?) people I love know (forewarn?) what is coming, either for them or their spouse. One of the grim fringe benefits of having lost the love of one's life is being ahead in time of people around you. Happily, some—the majority--of the married couples I know gladden me in their day-to-day love for each other. They may take each other for granted in small ways, but not the big ways. 

For a few married couples I know, however, I want to shake both the husband and the wife, and say: “Shut up and pay attention! You have no idea how lucky you two are!” But of course I say nothing, because what do I know? E.M. Forster points out that every marriage has a glass wall no one outside the marriage can see through. Besides, who wants to play the part of Christmas Future in A Christmas Carol.

I have written in these pages before that poets are blessed/cursed with a preternatural sense of their own mortality, and everyone else’s, as well. They say it can be a burden, but it certainly does put an extra glow on the wonder of being alive. They add it allows them to appreciate more profoundly what they have, and—more importantly—who they have.

Of course I also write a lot about Britta because writing is what I do, and as such it is a way of keeping her alive for me and our kids. The mysterious part is that there is often virtually no difference between what I write about and the act of writing about it. Or in short: the topic lives in the writing even as the writing lives in the topic. It gets spooky sometimes.

Not that I see myself (or pretend myself) a poet or even more than an average scribbler of prose, and I usually have good enough sense not to wish I were, but occasionally I do believe I get a glimpse at the sorts of things that must have gone on in Frost’s and Fitzgerald’s heads, let alone Poe’s, and that must be a most daunting and  exhausting way to live on a daily basis. 

Anyway, on the cheery topic of death and loss of spouses, here are two poems, one by Jane Kenyan and one by Donald Hall, who were man and wife, living up in God’s country in New Hampshire. First, he got cancer and beat it. Then she got cancer, fought it like hell, and didn’t.

I’m pretty sure both poems have appeared in the Day Book, but not together like this.

Otherwise

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise. 

Her Long Illness

Daybreak until nightfall,
he sat by his wife at the hospital
while chemotherapy dripped
through the catheter into her heart.
He drank coffee and read
the Globe. He paced; he worked
on poems; he rubbed her back
and read aloud. Overcome with dread,
they wept and affirmed
their love for each other, witlessly,
over and over again.
When it snowed one morning Jane gazed
at the darkness blurred
with flakes. They pushed the IV pump
which she called Igor
slowly past the nurses' pods, as far
as the outside door
so that she could smell the snowy air.  

Now that I have made your day, get your ass down to the florist for a dozen long-stemmed red roses!  

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. Two snaps, one from Holly in New England and one from John Venning here in Denmark.

P.P.S. The person who sent the above thank-you note, forgot to attach his or her gun-survey response. If it comes soon, fine! Hopefully—hold your breath!—results on the morrow!