Archive for April, 2014
“Oh, all the money that e’er I spent,
I spent it in good company;
And all the harm that e’er I’ve done,
Alas! It was to none but me.
And all I’ve done for want of wit
to memory now I can’t recall,
so fill to me the parting glass.
Good night, and joy be with you all.
Oh, all the comrades that e’er I had,
they’re sorry for my going away;
And all the family that e’er I had
would wish me one more day to stay.
But since it falls unto my lot
that I should rise and you should not,
I’ll gently rise and I’ll softly call:
‘Good night, and joy be with you all.'”
(“The Parting Glass”, trad. Celtic, lyrics slightly adapted by me).
I managed to sing this at my Dad’s funeral yesterday. I only wish I had gotten the chance to teach it to him.
-Clarity
it is
to live
without why
thrown into a great poverty of purpose
the wide-open abundance
of now
the rose that smiles at autumn
the tears at the beauty of birth
washing the dead
holding
their hands in yours
expect nothing and prepare
to receive everything
-Clarity
it was a far country at first
a far and lonely country
but oh so
beautiful
windswept and wild
untamed but full
of peace
i stood in a deep valley
looked up at mountains that reached
to run their fingers through clouds
caress eagles
gather stars
silence was true here
a green silence full of a deep
vibration. my feet thrummed
with the heart of this land
this land lived
for the infinite
i knew
it could never be conquered
only loved
longed for
like an ocean
the bricks that catch the water
of a dawning life
the road home
the earth that embraces you
at your end
(and oh there was an end
to everything i had ever been
and everything i could have been
this Earth embraced my darkness
this Ocean drowned my griefs
this Sun burned away my sins
like morning fog)
then one night
i saw my sweet country
laid to waste
green earth i longed to walk split:
such a terrible abundance!
running red
with thirty-nine rivers
sky turned black
earth caught fire
horror, ashes
green silence
turned grey
i found twelve deer that walked this country
huddled and trembling
streaked crimson
from thirty-nine rivers
deep dry wells for eyes
thirty-nine tears
i will wait
this land is my heart
but that is not why i wait
i wait because at dawn
i heard the sweetest voices:
three larks
flawless harmony
thirty-nine rivers ruffled
with morning wind
and now, from each
thirty-nine shoots
of green
-Clarity
I lost you among leaves
running through orchards
wholly painted
by sun
I lost you among curled shavings
watched in the workshop
pulled splinters
from tiny fingers
I lost you among lilies
you scattered birds
with your laughter
I lost you in me
My name
My work
My wonder
My fear
I lost you
Who will scatter the birds now?
all fallen silent
in the rain of your absence
Who will bring me home
from arthritic nighttime wanderings?
Who will be me
when I am no more?
Who will rise my sun?
-Clarity
there were no hydrangeas in the garden
outside the walls of Old Jerusalem
but had there been
they may have covered him
could we have buried him in blossoms
and kept him
from their spears?
would those branches weave themselves into knots
airful shields
to cover his head
sweet coffee skin
not prophet, nor patriarch
man
that i love and have loved
or would all attempts unravel
branches curl open
reveal his face
unafraid
like marble
is this my yeshua
or david?
before these hired hatefuls
false goliaths
white blossoms
keep watch over silence
would they burn away
in his sudden blaze
-Clarity
They were happy then.
We were given wine
wherever we walked.
Our words were mustardseeds
passed from village to village
his stories grew
wild
Thousands came to nest in them and stare
crow-voices all together talking
In the morning we found him quiet
Sick?
Just tired.
Why?
Never you mind for now.
Â
Passover is uncomfortable
Something is missing
Why do we need to remember?
Find me a garden, he simply says.
I’d like to stop
by a quiet place.
-Clarity
PS Sorry this was a day late, guys. :)
The one
stumbling from the wilderness
was not the one
we had known,
soft-spoken carpenter’s son:
thin and ragged at hem and hairline;
hands, feet, forehead
scratched by brambles,
eyes haunted and lovely
voice rusty from disuse,
but somehow full
of quiet power.
Sitting at table,
eyes fixed on palm fronds burning
in the hearth.
The loaf and his cup
untouched
contemplated.
His mother took his hand
and said
“Sonâ€
then silent
waiting
eyes full
their bracketing lines
so deep.
His answer is soft and cool as water.
“I have to go away.â€
She squeezes his hand.
“When will you return?â€
Their eyes meet
The silence
unravels
for days.
-Clarity
Grief is hating God not for taking him away but for making you write the obituary.
Grief is being so hungry but the thought of eating makes you feel sick.
Grief is knowing someone is sobbing in the other room but you can’t bear to get up to comfort them.
Grief is a keening train whistle at 3am.
Grief is the mountains carving a hole in your ribcage and resting there.
Grief is pouring your Gen-macha into a “University of Victoria Dad” mug.
Grief is a guitar that no-one remembers bringing upstairs to the living room.
Grief is a mostly finished bag of potato chips rolled up and pinched shut with clothespins.
Grief is white sympathy orchids being, for a moment, the worst thing you’ve ever seen.
Grief is stories that you haven’t heard before that make you wonder if you ever really knew him at all.
Grief is a pot of hydrangeas left on the doorstep.
Grief is wondering how the sun could possibly be shining.
Grief is wondering why the whole world doesn’t stop.
Grief is a stuffed turtle in the spare bedroom that you can’t let go.
Grief is a jar of Tikka Masala that he will never use again.
Grief is losing all pretense of composure over a pair of reading glasses.
Grief is screaming, “I want my daddy!” like a toddler simply because it is true.
Grief is rage that other older and sicker people didn’t die first.
Grief is not wanting to see the body so you can remember him just as he was the last time you saw him.
Grief is thinking, “Will this make me stronger? Better? More compassionate?” and your heart laughing bitterly like it will break.
Grief is unbearable gratitude that he recorded those new songs he told you he wrote.
Grief is not wanting to be alone and yet unable to bear one more hug because it’s not his.
Grief is the persistence of snow on the mountain.
Grief is the seeds in the garden that he planted but can’t harvest.
Grief is a stone that melts and re-solidifies, over and over.
-Clarity
In a crisis the English always make a cup of tea, so that was what my husband did.
I never got to drink it, though, because Mum came and got me, and that meant that we had to make a pot at her house. So we did, and I drank too much and got jittery, and we looked at photos after crying in each others’ arms.
On the morning after your father dies, you’ll eat leftover pizza and cry and think, “We were supposed to go fishing. Ah, fuck.” You’ll console your grieving stepmother and say, “We’ll get through this together,” and wonder if now she’ll finally understand that you’re not a child and then feel bad for the thought. You’ll head to Community Worship at school hoping to God no-one says, “Don’t cry; he’s with Jesus now,” because if someone does you can’t be held responsible for the consequences. You also hope to God no-one says, “Think of what this will do for your ministry. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” because you’ll croak, “I’d rather be a shitty priest with a dad.”
Pink and white and yellow tulips will come from your beloved friend overseas, and they’re beautiful but you’ll let your husband thank the florist because you’re not sure what to say.
Your denominational mentor — a jewel of a priest who agrees when you say dispassionately, “Everyone dies, big deal,” and says, “Yes,” when you say “If anyone tells me to rejoice because he’s in heaven I’m going to tell them to fuck right off,” and means it — will drive you to a liquor store so you can buy a bottle of wine for tonight ’cause why the hell not? Friends will give hugs and no-one will say all the things you are steeling yourself to hear because of course they won’t; there likely won’t be any words at all, except maybe “There are no words,” and that’s how you want it because most of the ones on offer are just shit: already consumed, partially digested, no nutritional value, and totally unrecognizable now, all original truth and light gone, and they stink anyway so who cares. You’ll thank God that no-one tries to play pastoral care superhero and try to convince you that God is in this dark time, because, hell, you know that, know it like the shade of his eyes or the feel of his hugs, tighter and longer as he got older, or the sound of his chuckle, the one that made things all better but could also be totally infuriating, or the deep silence that said, “I love you, daughter, but that kind of bone deep truth has no words: truth is these blue mountains and they sing a better song than the one in my heart. We are Morgans and our feelings are carried inside us like small grey stones at the bottom of a river. Best to let them lie, or you’ll slip and they’ll sink you.” (And you never could and that was okay: his river ran still and deep enough for the both of you.)
What happens now?
What happens now as you take notes on what to discuss about arrangements and the service and should we even have a service or just a wake and how to pass the time between now and then? What happens when you make plans to head up north to his little Brackendale house and his garden full of beans and peas and carrots, knowing full well that the sight of that house and his guitars and the stupid dollar-store clock you bought him and the Celtic dragon you drew and framed for him is going to cleave to your jaws like in Psalm 22, but it’s really those mountains that will get you, the blue mountains that will really blast a ragged hole in your heart and let his blood and her blood — your blood — pour like a river down your body and mark you, mark you for a mortal, brushed by death on the busy highways of the world, mark you for tears and platitudes and silence and flowers and cards and other peoples’ stories of death and other peoples’ anxieties and superstitions and guilt.
What do you do when night comes and you wake up from a dream of childhood, wake up with breasts and a husband and twenty years’ worth of schooling but no goddamn idea how it happened that you could wake up a grown-up when your dream of second hand plastic ponies bought at the Value Village and singing “Summertime” by the campfire and casting your line on a misty lake and “Daddy, do the Inspector Gadget voice” is still so real?
What do you do when you lie awake that night next to your husband and all the terror comes home to roost and builds twisted nests in your hair as you think, “Please God, don’t let me wake up with bloodless grey morning light coming through the window next to a body that has cooled and a heart that has flickered out”?
What do you do when the two of you get in the shower and you look at water beading on his back and realize that one day he will die and you will put him in the ground and you don’t know when, you can’t know, and you will die too and leave your own ragged hole in some other heart, maybe a heart that hasn’t even been born yet, a hole perfectly shaped only for you: nonadaptable, doomed to only ever be full or empty, with nothing in between?
What do you do?
I pray, walk along an empty sidewalk on my way to Community Worship singing at the top of my lungs, without really knowing why: only knowing that I must or else the emptiness wins.
And I drink tea.
-Clarity
So…my dad died.
It was completely unexpected and it’s going to take time to work through the shock of losing him. Right now, although I feel like I was hit by a truck, I am also incredibly grateful: for being at VST, one of my favourite places, when I got the news; for the love, prayers, and support from all of my family and friends; and for the fact that, a couple of years ago, I decided to start saying, “I love you” every time Dad and I said goodbye. He was not a demonstrative person in terms of emotion or affection and it took me a long time to learn and appreciate the love that often rested underneath silence as we drove to his place or looked at the mountains outside his house in Squamish or laid down a track in his basement. I will miss him so much.
If you’re a praying type, your prayers are very appreciated.
Thanks all of you for being my friends.
Here’s what I’m grateful for.
-Clarity
