Yesterday marked the two-month anniversary of my father’s death, and like I did the morning before, I was on my way to the 5:55 a.m. scheduled sunrise by 4:50 a.m. I carried with me a handmade sympathy card from my friend, Katharine, who last week had just learned of my father’s death. Her sentiments inside were very thoughtful:
I’m so sorry about your father’s death. Why do our fathers have so much power over us? In death as in life. And sometimes more in death, even decades later. There is so much to examine and wonder about, but they aren’t there any more to ask . . . if we ever could ask.
Over the last years of his life, my sisters or I shared some of my sunrise photos with my father. His response was typically monosyllabic, but yesterday, whether he liked it or not, my father’s spirit accompanied me on my walk.
Included in Katharine’s card, was this poem about which she wrote, “Somehow this poem speaks to me about fathers.”
“I know that hope is the hardest love we carry./He slept with his long neck folded, like a letter put away.”
I’ve kept the above card and letter on top of my desk ever since I received it for my 63rd birthday.
On my way home, I heard the distinct honking of Canadian geese as I do on most mornings. I looked up just as two flew over me. They were not the blue herons of Hirschfield’s poem, but there we were, flying overhead, my father and me, the solitary habit being our way.
Katharine’s husband is Michael Collier, the former poet laureate of the state of Maryland, former director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and now retired University of Maryland professor. Here is a poem included in his collection “The Neighbor” first published in 1995. This poem has an oblique connection to this post with its buildup to death in nursing homes and hospices. Also, Michael and I are the same age, and I clearly remember these drills when I was in elementary school.
THE DRILL
When the fire bell rang its two short, one long
electric signal, the boys closest to the wall
of windows had to raise the blinds and close
the sashes, and then join the last of our line
as it snaked out the classroom onto the field
of asphalt where we stood, grade-by-grade,
until the principal appeared with her gold Timex.
We learned early that catastrophe must always
be attended in silence, that death prefers us
orderly and ordered, and that rules will save us
from the chaos of our fear, so that even
if we die, we die together, which was the calm
almost consoling thought I had each time
the yellow C.D. siren wailed and we would tuck
ourselves beneath our sturdy desktops.
Eyes averted from the windows,
we’d wait for the drill to pass or until
the nun’s rosary no longer clicked and we could hear
her struggling to free herself from the leg-well
of her desk, and then her call for us to rise
and, like herself, brush off the dust gathered
on our clothes. And then the lessons resumed.
No thought of how easily we interred ourselves,
though at home each would dream the mushroom cloud,
the white cap of apocalypse whose funnel stem
sucked glass from windows, air from lungs,
and made all these rehearsals the sad and hollow
gestures that they were, for we knew it in our bones
that we would die, curled in a last defense—
head on knees, arms locked around legs—
the way I’ve seen it since in nursing homes
and hospices: forms bedsheets can’t hide,
as if in death the body takes on the soul’s
compact shape, acrobatic, posed to tumble free
of the desktop or bed and join the expanse
and wide scatter of debris.
Just WOW. If loss can generate such beauty is it really loss? The photos, poems and your writing are woven beautifully as is Katharine’s card, separate elements into a gorgeous whole.
Thank you.
Forgive me, Beth, but apparently, I am not getting my usual email notifications when a reader posts a comment. That and a couple other Spark and Spitfire glitches are bugging me. Guess I need to post more often.
All bitching aside, you are so very welcome and THANK YOU for your WOW. Your use of the verb “woven” is like the front of Katharine’s card, isn’t it? Sometimes a card with its sentiment comes precisely when you need it — like so many of the cards your have sent to me over the last 17 years. xoxo
Sharon, Thank you deeply for this post. Your photography talent is exquisite. I was touched by your friend’s comments about the power of fathers. My father suffers from alcoholism and we are essentially estranged. He was once a good dad. His power over me is so complicated. Thank you for sharing these words; they also seem to fit me. My daughter asked me last night, “Are you surprised your dad is still alive?” Heavy question from a 21-year-old who doesn’t really know her grandfather. I said, “Yes, I am.” When that day comes, I don’t know how I will feel, but I know I will be able to ask you and you will understand. Thank you, in advance, for helping me with complicated (and powerful) father/daughter grief.
Oh my dearest, dearest, Kelly. I know you have profound sadness about being estranged from your father. I don’t know much about him, but the little I do know reinforces my deep belief that the gods, goddesses and their little dogs, too, can transform the most unfortunate circumstances into healing beauty. [Look in the mirror.]
“Are you surprised your dad is still alive?” What a heartbreaking question from your 21-year-old beautiful creation. Yes, your father seems like he’s really not engaged in the beauty and forgiveness found in being fully present in the world and with loved ones. I’m so sorry. Your grief will be complicated and tortuous, but perhaps a new relationship with him will emerge when he’s no longer in this sweet world. I suspect sunrise companionship and conversations await. Love you so much.
“Hope is the hardest love we carry.” I know how you carried that hard-love hope for years and years, so wanting that connectedness with a father who had been so absent during so much of your life. Your grieving now is so profound, so painful, and at the same time, produces such beauty in your depiction of the depth of that hard, hard, painful love.
To see you flying with your father into all the questions and perplexities that yet await is very moving. Thank you again for calling all of us to a deeper place!
You are very welcome, Carol.
I love this: “To see you flying with your father into all the questions and perplexities . . . . ” Thank you for deepening that metaphor.
And your spirit has been a welcome and loving companion on many a sunrise walk. xoxo