Endings
So much going on in the world, and in my own life, to mourn and to celebrate. On a personal level, the mourning is caused by Sweetybabe’s mother’s sad slow march toward death from a brain tumor. Joann was diagnosed with a glioblastoma multiforme in February, at which time the prognosis was that she would live for 6 months. She is now at home receiving hospice care. And yet there’s an element of celebration — of the life she had, the joy she brought to others, and this opportunity for her family to come together around her. The Boy is going out to visit her (we’re in Minnesota, she’s in California) later this month to say goodbye to his Grandma. We’ll be out there visiting as well in a few weeks. This week we spent some time reading through some poetry by Mary Oliver and others, finding poems that we thought might resonate with Joann, that could be used for her to give to her caregivers as remembrances, and distributed at her memorial service.
On a national level, it’s the disaster in New Orleans. I had visited there a few times, and the unfathomable becomes more real when I imagine the people I met there and the places I visited — the little antique shops, the glass studio, the sushi bar where I tried steamed edamame for the first time, the great art studios where we first discovered the art of Michael deMeng, the fortune teller who read Sweetybabe’s palm. All gone.
On a planetary level, the summer has mostly passed as well; and yet I look forward to and celebrate the renewed feeling I get in the fall — new school shoes, new books, the return of sweaters, apple crisp, crispy leaves, cool evenings. But before the summer is entirely gone, I leave you with this poem by Mary Oliver:
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?- Mary Oliver