death – Little Home In The Valley

I can remember too few things from my early childhood, but some of the clearest memories involve feelings. I remember when a puppy who I had bonded with was killed by a passing car on an elm-shadowed Minneapolis street. The implacability and irreversibility of the loss were things I could not process. How monstrously unfair it all was. For a time I made a mental fetish out of the puppy’s short life, and each day for weeks my thoughts swung back and forth from the crushing sense of loss to brief episodes when I forgot for a moment or two about grieving and simply enjoyed something. Anything. Then when I realized that I was actually living a “normal” life I would feel a terrible sense of being unfaithful to the absent pet. Slowly time took over and life began to ease as those feelings took their proper place, a place one could live in.

The oscillations between nonacceptance to guilt to nonacceptance to guilt ad infinitum in a landscape of misery and self-pity … I recall them very well. So this week when I found myself doing the exact same thing eighty years later I was not completely surprised. My skills of compartmentalization are much better now and I recognized that when the episodes of chest pains and flooding silent tears come suddenly I know that they are not permanent states but are of grief that will ease with time. And the guilt of surviving and being happy once again will also alchemically change into a deep respect and appreciation for the life which had been shared.

But the grieving is still an awesome force. It is the price to be paid for loving something or someone if that precious bit of life is taken away. It’s not a case of me over here and my late friend Poco over there. Our lives had become intertwined, grown imperceptibly together over nearly two decades so that his death has been a ripping away of a part of myself. An amputation. A violent lessening.

And just as when I was six years old and that puppy was killed, today I find myself crying out “This is not fair!” It seems that I don’t have to look far for my inner child at all. He is right here typing away at a Macintosh.

******

Ashokan Farewell, by Priscilla Herdman

******

******

We’re having 80 degree days this week, the forsythia are blooming hard and fast, and the fruit trees are following their lead. The stores that sell seeds and plants are already filling their shelves.

It is late at night and I couldn’t sleep so I took a cup of herbal tea out onto the backyard deck where it was a lovely 60 degrees. The slimmest sliver of a moon is nearly settled below the western horizon. The Big Dipper hangs right above my head. The heavens seem to be properly arranged. Kudos to whomever is in charge.

In the distance someone revs a car loud enough to possibly interest the local police, I don’t know. Maybe this sort of disturbance of the peace is one they let slide. Across the way from our house someone’s dog barks. Our cat Willow hasn’t come in from her evening rounds yet, nights like this one are just too interesting to her. So much night stuff going on.

During this afternoon I noticed a bunch of yellowjackets buzzing around looking for homesites. Time to get out the wasp traps. It is best if you can get them out early and catch the queens to shut down nests before they get started. Spring has sprung in full.

******

Apple Tree, by Why Bonnie

******

******

Our lives are like sweaters
Which are never finished
For as we add a row or two
Of length, to fit where we are now
A cuff or collar may unravel just a bit
And need repair

I think that sorrow is a time
When many rows are dropped at once
And slow replaced
The wind blows through the holes
That have appeared for others
To appreciate

We stop, pull back
Repair enough to make it wearable
Then go on as before
All knitting
And unraveling
Together

******

A Pillow of Winds, by Pink Floyd

******

Halloween here in Paradise is generally a tame affair, as it was this year. A gaggle of well-costumed children are paraded by our house, all accompanied by their parents. They come with collection bags open to receive our safely packaged bits of candy. All things considered, it’s a pretty sanitary evening, especially since it celebrates the demonic.

As a kid I would be sent out into the world wearing a cheap mask and carrying a pillowcase. I don’t recall ever having parental accompaniment. The world of treats had not yet devolved into the present-day tiny avatars of candy bars, but might feature a host of unpackaged things to eat. Among this bounty might be found:

home-made popcorn balls
apples, with or without caramel
handfuls of candy corn or peanuts
cookies out of the host’s oven
full-sized candy bars

There was a complete absence of razor blades, brownies containing psychedelics, or any of the other scary materials or objects that addled conspiracy theorists dreamed up to alarm the populace. (As a species we are so easily frightened that I wonder sometimes how we ever found the courage to leave the caves?)

After Robin and I had turned out the lights and got out of the giving away stuff business for the night, we watched a movie, Late Night With The Devil. It was one of the better horror films I’ve seen. I’d rate it a mild gross-out, but there is so much else to watch.

A movie to be savored. Rotten Tomatoes loved it.

******

Rivers of Babylon, by the Melodians

******

When I was quite young, and spent summers on Grandpa Jacobson’s farm, going to get the mail was a big deal. The large galvanized mailbox was located up on the county road about a mile from the farm. So when we opened that thing one day and found that it contained a large and heavy package, it was enough to be an excitement. The package was addressed to:

Nels Jacobson
Rural Route 3
Kenyon, Minnesota

At that age I was a bundle of barefoot curiosity, and when Grandpa was taking way too long to open the darn thing to suit me, I began to badger him about it until finally he reached down into the pocket of this Oshkosh B’Gosh bib overalls and retrieved his pocket knife. Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought, as the knife did its work and the carton flew open.

It was a book! A huge book! On the cover were the words “Holy Bible.” It was a true extravagance of a book, and Grandpa lived in a world of very few extravagances .

That farm, which I loved like no patch of earth since, was never big enough to support his family, and taking off-the-farm extra jobs was always a necessity. Leftover money at the end of any given month … or at the end of the year … zero.

But somehow this treasure had come to him. From then on it always rested on the small table alongside his armchair. Table and book to the right, coffee-can spittoon to the left. Evenings he would sit and read, the last thing done before going to bed.

Long years later, after his and Grandma’s passing, the well-worn book came to be mine. Grandpa had made me a gift of it. Inside the front cover were these words:

This Holy Bible shall be presented to our first and oldest grandchild, Jon O. Flom, by Grandpa and Grandma Jacobson, whenever I and Grandma are dead .

Nels was a man of short stature, but had been a giant in my world as a kid. His was a gift that was not taken lightly. Even today, just opening it has the power to bring memories flooding in.

******

In the Mississippi River, by Mavis Staples

******

In two days the U.S. takes its National Civics and Morals test, as Election Day arrives. It’s pretty obvious that a whole lot of folks haven’t studied for it at all. I am as prepared as I can get myself to deal with either depression or relief, but no matter how it goes, there will be a bad taste in my mouth.

In studying the history of the Third Reich, and the role that “Ordinary Germans*” played in that horrorshow, I had realized long ago that we must have at least a few of the same sort of people here at home. People who seem outwardly normal but given half a chance will quickly revert to barbarism. While in my gut I knew this, I hadn’t realized until recently how many of them there were … how many of our neighbors have kept a brown or black shirt in their closet, ready to put on at the first opportunity.

Fool me once … fool me twice …

*Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, by Daniel Goldhagen

******

******

River, by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

******

Our first snowfall of the year happened on Wednesday last. Big flakes off and on all day. Each one melted immediately on contact.

We’ve seen snow at higher elevations for at least a month now, but not in the valley. The San Juans are looking quite beautiful in their “snow-capped mountain majesty.” (Can’t remember where I heard that phrase but I’m quoting it anyway).

******

Today is Robin’s birthday. It is not up to me to tell you which one that is. We will celebrate it sensibly, as behooves sensible people, no matter what their years. No late-night partying, no extravagances, no hangover from the ingestion of an inordinate amount of cake frosting. Just quiet recognition of the passage of time, with perhaps a remembrance tossed in here and there.

We know our way around birthdays, we two. Experts, you might say.

******

Tag: death

Inner Children

Dreadful