A little over two years ago, I posted this poem about my friend K’s cancer diagnosis. It subsequently appeared in an anthology that raised funds for a UK charity.
Today, we received the sad news that she had passed away.
Rest in peace, K.
Tag: Loss
adding up
This has been a spring of losses and endings and changes.
It’s getting to be a lot to handle at once.
The most difficult was Grandma’s death on March 22nd, just as spring began. We have been grateful for the support of family and friends and are especially grateful for the committal service that we were able to celebrate last week. There will continue to be a lot of work in the coming months – emotional work, certainly, but also physical work as we deal with the rest of the things she left behind and with decisions and paperwork that come with settling her financial affairs.
The week before Grandma’s committal, T and I were singing at the funeral of Father James, a loss that brings echoes of the loss of our parish years ago.
And just after we returned from the committal, we received news of the death of Paco’s only remaining sibling after years of decline with Alzheimer’s disease. He was the third of Paco’s siblings to die from Alzheimer’s as their father had; three other siblings died too young to have developed it. At 91, with no symptoms, Paco is well beyond the age when any of his affected family members developed them. Still, it is bittersweet to have lost all of his brothers and sisters.
There are other changes happening, too, with T moving home to job search after finishing her master’s degree and with continuing family medical issues.
Although it is difficult and stressful, I am okay.
Most of the time.
I do rely on family and friends for support. Recently, when I was feeling overwhelmed, I called my college roommate, just to talk things through. It helps so much. Another thing for which to be grateful.
Eleven years ago, I experienced another spring of loss – the death of my friend Angie, the loss of our long-time parish, and the final months of my father-in-law’s battle with cancer. The aftermath of these losses has continued through the following years and this spring’s losses echo and intensify them in complex ways.
I know that, despite the pain and difficulties, there is the opportunity to grow in wisdom, compassion, and strength in response.
I hope to do that.
Meanwhile, I am trying to be supportive of others and gentle with myself. I am trying not to feel guilty about all the things I am not doing as I would like, including blogging and poetry.
Personal growth can only help my poetry.
It’s possible that my blogging practice may evolve, too. I am spending nearly all my blogging time for now on writing. It feels strange not to be spending hours reading and commenting, but limits of time and brainpower make that the way things have to be. I had thought this would be a short-term mode of operation, but am discovering that this constellation of losses and new responsibilities is likely to cause some lasting re-organization of time, effort, and priorities.
I don’t know where the path will lead or how many other detours or derailments are in store. I remain profoundly grateful to all who are accompanying me along the way, whether personally or digitally.
I would be adrift without you.
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SoCS: project delay
And I am not getting much done these last few months…
There have been a lot of losses with a lot of aftermath.
I’ll get back to my collection at some point…
Wish me luck.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “book.” Come join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2016/06/03/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-june-416/
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SoCS: Mother’s Day
So, I have been absent from SoCS for weeks – and the reason has to do with a parent.
Specifically, my spouse’s mom, whom I refer to on my blog as Grandma.
Grandma passed away unexpectedly on March 22nd and tomorrow will be our first Mother’s Day without her.
I am very, very grateful to still have both of my parents here; we will be having Mother’s Day brunch with them tomorrow.
My husband, known on my blog as B, has no parents left at all now. We lost his dad almost eleven years ago.
Since Grandma’s death, I have posted very little. (There are some posts about her death and things that have happened since, but nowhere near the number of posts I usually make.) I have done almost no reading of others’ blogs and almost no commenting. I wish I could say that this return to SoCS marked a sea change – that I would be back to my usual posts in Linda’s SoCS and One-liner Wednesday, my usual level of posting at Top of JC’S Mind, visiting dozens of blogs a day, and writing comments.
I wish that, but I know it is not reality.
There is still a ton of tasks that need my attention.
And, in happier news, our younger daughter T is about to graduate with a master’s degree. We expect her to be moving back home to job search, so I need time for her, too.
I hope that all my blog-community friends are hanging in there and having a good time. I also hope that those of you who are blessed to have a parent still living will make an extra effort to contact them and to show that you care.
Because, someday, you may not still have that opportunity.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “apparent/a parent”. Come join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2016/05/06/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-716/
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Month’s Mind
Yesterday, there was a memorial service at the senior community where my parents and, until recently, B’s mom live. They hold one every quarter for residents who have died in the previous three months; this time, there were eight.
This service marked the first official commemoration of Grandma’s death. She did not want to have a wake or funeral; there will be a graveside service later in the spring back in New England.
By coincidence, the service was almost exactly a month after Grandma’s death. It made me think of a Month’s Mind Mass, which is from my Catholic faith tradition. Grandma was not Catholic and the service was not a mass, but it was comforting to me.
The service was the first time I have been a bit teary. I have been so busy concentrating on doing everything that needs to be done and on supporting others that I haven’t really done much mourning myself.
Reaction to loss follows its own path…
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Four weeks
Today marks four weeks since Grandma died.
The time has passed in a blizzard of paperwork, phone calls, sorting, packing, and hauling. As if to add to the surreal sense of time, we had a springtime siege of cold weather and snow, following a winter that was much milder than usual. Had Grandma been alive, she would have heartily disapproved of the turn in the weather. She liked things to proceed in an orderly fashion and was inclined to take inclement weather as personal affront.
One of the hidden blessings in all the sorting and cleaning out has been that we came upon so many reminders of her life. Photos from the decades of her life, including a newspaper clipping of her modeling a fur coat back in the fifties. Playing board games with our children. Writing the weekly menus in calligraphy so that she could stay in practice. Her favorite authors and movies. Her love of decorating for every possible season and holiday, including three drawers of candles in a range of colors to match the decor.
We reached a milestone yesterday. We turned her cottage back over to Good Shepherd Village so that they can ready it for the next resident. Grandma has been the only person to live there, as she moved in shortly after the community opened in fall of 2009. It was bittersweet for B and me to walk in for the last time, having stripped it back to the bare walls and floors, looking much the same as it did when we first saw it.
The window treatments and the dents her furniture had left in the carpets were the only visible reminders that Grandma had made her home here near us for her last six years.
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Shock
Somewhere, the Fates were snickering behind their hands.
Monday afternoon, I wrote poetry with my friends at Sappho’s Circle. Just as I was preparing to drive home, I got a call from B. He was at the hospital, waiting while his mother, known here as Grandma, was in the heart catheterization lab. She had had a heart attack.
I was not far from the hospital and got there as quickly as I could to wait with him.
The cardiologist was able to remove the blood clot that had caused the heart attack; there was no need for a stent. The nurses got her settled into the cardiac intensive care unit and we were able to spend several hours in her room, as she gradually woke from the sedation and B and I answered dozens of medical history questions on Grandma’s behalf.
We left the hospital at about 8:00 PM, with Grandma stable and resting under the watchful eyes of the ICU staff. We all expected a few days in the hospital, maybe a short stay in rehab, and then back to her cottage at her senior living community.
We didn’t sleep well. At 6 AM, B’s cell phone rang. Grandma’s blood pressure had dropped, but they had been able to raise it back to an acceptable level. Then, she became short of breath, but it was difficult to address it. They might need to put in a breathing tube as a short term measure. We dressed and headed to the hospital. It turned out that, as we were en route, Grandma’s heart had stopped.
We waited near the nurses’ station as they continued efforts to revive her, but they were not able to.
Less than 24 hours after her heart attack, Grandma had died.
Shock.
There just isn’t any other word for what we have all been feeling since that moment. Everyone that we have had to tell, everyone who has spoken to us, we are all in shock. “But I just saw her at the movie on Friday.” “But she was here Monday morning, after her PT session.” “But she was at dinner with her friends on Saturday.” No one quite seems to be able to wrap their brains around the fact that death can be so quick.
Everyone is grateful that there was not a long period of pain and suffering. It was one of the things that Grandma had feared the most. She loved her cottage in the retirement village and did not want to leave it to live in the Health Center. We are grateful that she did not have to do that.
But we are still in shock.
And we are sad.
B and I have been doing our best to talk to people and deal with paperwork and start sorting and make lists and not miss anything that is important to do.
It’s been less than 72 hours at this point, but it feels so much longer. I have to remind myself what day it is.
And that it is Holy Week for most Christians, including my denomination.
As I write this, it is very early on Good Friday morning.
I had tried to sleep, but couldn’t, so I got up to write this.
Before I go to bed, I want to go to the website for my friend Angie’s memorial fund. It has been eleven years since she died. In 2005, March 25th was also Good Friday.
I don’t quite understand why I am not crying.
It must be the shock.
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Tara Betts is the Poet of the Day!
Tara Betts is featured today in the Poem-a-Day series of the Academy of American Poets!
You can read Tara’s poem “Gentle Collisions” as well as her note on the poem and her bio, see her photo, and click on the audio link to hear her read her poem.
We were blessed to have Tara here for a few years while she earned her PhD from Binghamton University. I met her through Binghamton Poetry Project and Bunn Hill Poets. With her bright, shiny doctorate completed, she headed back to Chicago to teach. We all wish her well but miss her!
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The Summons
Church yesterday was unexpectedly difficult.
Our younger daughter Trinity was with me, which is a rare occurrence in the last year as she has been away from home for grad school and a summer internship. She pointed out that we were singing some of our favorite hymns, including “The Summons” which we were singing for entrance. (Text is at link; other sources list the author as John Bell.)
I love “The Summons.” I love its message and its challenge. I love Kelvingrove, the lilting Scottish tune to which it is usually sung. I loved singing it. I loved conducting it during the years that I volunteered as accompanist with our youth and junior choirs. (I usually accompanied anthems, but conducted hymns.) “The Summons” was an important part of an ordination and first Mass weekend for a member of our parish ten years ago last June.
And that is the problem.
That momentous celebration weekend was also our last with that parish, which had been my church home for over twenty years, where our daughters were baptized and made their first Eucharist, where I volunteered extensively with the music ministry and liturgy committee, where our daughters sang and cantored and rang handbells, where “The Summons” was an important call to mission, where I felt called to serve.
And it all fell apart.
The gospel reading yesterday spoke to what had happened. Someone in authority had fallen victim to an obsessive and slavish regard for the “laws of men” at the expense of love, justice, mercy, and compassion. I believe that this person suffered from mental illness, but our bishop, to whom we had appealed, would not protect us.
After the ordination/first Mass weekend, we left the parish in solidarity with a staff member who had been unjustly terminated after decades of service.
Ten summers ago, Trinity was transitioning from 9th to 10th grade, which meant that she was in the middle of a two year sequence to prepare for the sacrament of confirmation. In order to continue, we joined a parish near her school, so that she would already know some of the other students in her confirmation class. The circumstances surrounding our departure from our former parish had been soul-crushing for all of us, but she was in the most vulnerable position. She considered not being confirmed at all. In the end, she did decide to request confirmation, which involved writing a personal letter to the very bishop who had refused us his protection. The parish confirmation director told me the letter was honest and powerfully expressed Trinity’s feelings about what had happened.
I’m sure it did. I never saw it. I think that Trinity wanted to spare me any additional pain.
“The Summons” became a painful reminder of what we had all lost. Whenever it came up at Mass during the first six years, I would cry through it, unable to sing. Gradually, as some healing occurred, I found that I could sing it again, especially once Trinity had graduated from college and was singing with the choir at Holy Family.
I thought I was finally over attaching pain to hymn.
Until yesterday.
I was thinking – it’s ten years. Trinity is beside me, she is strong spiritually, and she is singing this beautiful song of mission which we both love.
And I started crying. Not enough that I wasn’t able to still sing, albeit tremulously and missing a phrase here and there.
Some tears of loss and pain. Some tears of gratitude.
And some tears right now, while writing this…
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Sunday blast from the past
…although “blast” may not be the right word.
It happens that the lectionary readings at church today contained two texts which I have set to music.
The Hebrew Scriptures reading from Proverbs chapter 9 contains part of the text I used in composing an anthem for the dedication of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Johnson City, NY and the Gospel reading from John chapter 6 is the basis for my piece “And I Will Raise Them Up,” which was also written for the choir at Blessed Sacrament.
It’s as though all that happened in another lifetime.
Ten years ago, the parish that I knew, loved, and served disintegrated. A remnant of it existed for a while longer and eventually merged with a nearby parish. Its complex of buildings closed after a second devastating flood within five years. They have been sold to a nearby Christian college, which will eventually re-open the church as their chapel, although, as is common, the altar, stained glass windows, and other religious accouterments were removed before the building was sold.
Today, knowing that the tower windows are gone is especially poignant. I had chosen the texts for my anthem for the dedication of the renovated and expanded church building dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament based on those windows, which depicted three aspects of the Eucharist – nourishment, healing, and presence – using images from Hebrew Scriptures. The Proverbs text we heard today, in which Wisdom prepares and invites everyone to a feast, was the basis of the “nourishment” section and the source of the title, “Wisdom Has Built Herself a House.”
It was sung publicly only once, at the dedication of the church. It’s unlikely that it will ever be sung again. It exists only on mute, hand-written pages and as an echo in my memory.
Joanne Corey 