And anyway, as old and as weathered and tired as I ever get, I hope I never stop looking up at the moon and the stars and the clouds. If I live to 100 or more, I hope I wear every year and line, every scar and gray hair and crow’s foot with all the wonder and whimsy and goddamn I told you so that I earned. Because I wasn’t put on this planet to be quiet as a mouse or pretty as a picture frozen in time. I am a woman and I contain a whole world in me. As much as I was made to nurture and to create and mend, I wasn’t made to bend. I was made to roar. Cover your ears if you think it’s too loud.
I’ve had enough of grief, so today I’ll focus on love. I won’t give time to that moment when you lose someone, when you feel your chest collapse, you go concave and hollow and you know that you’re alone. Because I know love never turns to loved. Gone isn’t lost. That place in your heart isn’t empty. It couldn’t be. It’s just gone fallow, and only for now. Soon, again, it will grow. It will grow new and alive and long, like bright yellow flowers turned royal blue. We become legacies forever and forever and forever and that love will always go on.
Graham’s sweet dad, Bill, my wonderful father-in-law and Lucy’s most beloved Papa, passed away on Saturday at 6:04 p.m., surrounded by his wife of 58 years and his two sons. It happened quickly, though he’d been dealing with some health challenged for a long time. Meg, Graham, and T sat with him until the end, and I’m glad of it. He loved them, he loved all of us, and he would have done the same. He carried kindness, joy, curiosity, creativity, warmth, and a friendly smile everywhere he went. He painted, and puzzled, and loved wine and travel, and swam in the ocean, and never stopped doing the things that mattered to him
He lived. And in his memory, we will, too. Every day. I’ll miss him. I’m grateful that I got to know him, and I’m grateful that Lucy will carry his beautiful legacy.
It’s the waiting that’s the worst – Sleepless nights watching the phone, willing it to ring, or better not to. Those nights aren’t quiet. They’re sitting alone in the silent dark and wondering wondering wondering what comes next. And then the most wrenching thought: When? When? When? No good time. No right moment. Just this: The waiting waiting waiting for the one thing you never wanted.
I saw your wings once in a church surrounding us in prayer – dust in the air and soft golden light, delicate and quiet, shining through leaded glass and glinted panes that we created. But you did it first.
I think this might have been the first poem I ever posted on the blog. I didn’t have a lot of followers then, and I don’t know that it’s gotten a lot of attention. I’m happy to have an opportunity to share it again, thanks to Annie at Tales of a Family, who posted a writing prompt for this week “inviting us to remember the men who shaped our lives – not always through grand speeches or big moments, but through the quiet lessons they lived every day.”
I’ve talked about my grandfather, James, in the collaboration Annie and I have been working on, about how his death prompted me to start my creative journey. But his life inspired me, too. He worked hard, he fought in World War II and lost friends doing it, he loved and supported his family (his wife, my beautiful grandmother and his six children), and he enjoyed the small, quiet moments you can carve out in a busy, not always easy life. He loved fishing, sitting on the porch swing, making music. He taught me to love those moments, too.
So here’s a poem for him, a memory and an elegy, that I’m grateful to revisit, called “My Grandfather’s Guitar.”
My grandfather’s guitar sits in a corner of my study untouched, gathering dust. When I was young and he was already old, it could pull notes straight from the air through his fingers and into my ears. I can hear them, though he is gone and his instrument’s gone quiet. When I was young, not even ten, he’d pick it up and start to play and then I’d go still, stuck to one spot until he was done. My grandfather’s guitar in his hands made magic, but I was too young to understand that music is magic made real for a moment. A fret and a twang and he’d made something that didn’t exist before and wouldn’t again. I sometimes imagine myself back there, wearing muddy tennis shoes with tangled hair, just listening. I can hear it, but no song ever sounds the same twice.
Our friends got married in June, their true real love made legal at last. And we were there, their people, all of us cheers and smiles and hugs and holding fast our hopes for a brighter tomorrow, as the One World spire lit up the gibbous sky in rainbows. And my toes, oh my toes.
Pride by the water Two sweet lovers said I do I wore the wrong shoes
**************
This is a poem for Rebecca’s May/June poetry challenge over at Fake Flamenco – to capture an imperfect moment in a haibun. (I’m bending her rules just a little bit, by about 15 words. I hope she doesn’t mind.)
It’s also a true story, and a celebration, a lamentation, a statement of support and hope. We aren’t where we were, back in 2016 when Graham and I attended this beautiful wedding of two very dear friends – not least because I now refuse to wear high heels – but we aren’t, as a society, where we’ll end up either. I have to believe that. I have to believe we’ll do better. I have to believe it for all the people I love who love each other but are afraid, for the people I love who can’t be their whole selves without fear and just live every day like everyone else.
You never have to be afraid with me, and I will always have a safe space for you in my heart and in my home. I’m proud of you. And I love you for exactly who you’ve always been meant to be.
I never met you. I never got the chance. You were here and then gone long before I came. But I know your face because it’s the same – the same as mine, as my grandfather, my grandmother, the people I love who knew you and loved you and mourned you every day. They held you forever near and dear in their hearts where no one no war could take you away. I carry you, too, safe in that sacred place.
I am the sum of all the best parts of my mom. I share her two-toned eyes and her thick hair. She taught me poems and kindness, and she chose a good man to be my dad. I am a reflection of her heart, a collection of her dreams – all the love and all the things she wants but never had. She gave those things to me.
Cheers to us! To you and me, to your guitar and my suede boots, my voice and your white hat. To the music we make together, and the laughs. As seasons pass and time goes on, I’m lucky every day that you’re my dad.
My dad starts salvage radiation for prostate cancer later this month, and I’ve been thinking about him and holding him in my heart these last several days as his treatment plan becomes clear. He’s the happiest, most friendly person you’ll ever meet, and watching him struggle with this diagnosis has been heartbreaking. But he’s also strong and brave, and he’s going to show cancer why you don’t mess with a hillbilly and his guitar.
I know it’s odd to write this post now with Mother’s Day coming up here in the US, but cancer doesn’t choose a convenient time. So, this one’s for him. I’ll write one for my mom – who is going to be with him every step of the way – next week. But for now, please leave a few kind words for my sweet dad if you have a minute. He’ll see them and appreciate them, and so will I.
A Virginia Writer's Diary 