Category Archives: Death of a Loved One

September is the Cruelest Month–NaPoWriMo 2016, Day 4

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Riding in luxury on a sofa in the back of Denis’s pickup, seeing the beautiful Klamath country in style. We were driven directly under a rainbow that day, so it was on either side of us as we passed!      photo by Georgia Moriarty

September is the Cruelest Month

One cruel month is January, murdering December––
failed resolutions of last year we’re now forced to remember.

February rivals it for those with lovers missing––
conjuring up memories of  valentines and kissing.

March may come in cruelly–a lion or a ram,
but it is not the cruelest month. It goes out like a lamb.

April is the the month of rain and flowering and rhyme.
It cannot be the cruelest month. It is the most sublime.

May is not a cruel month, nor June, most surely not.
July and August are most kind––luxurious and hot.

September is the month for me that is the cruelest.
September is the month where I received my biggest test

in learning how to live alone after so many years,
conquering the loss of you. Battling my fears.

September was the month you left because you had to go––
away from planned adventures down a road you didn’t know.

Setting off alone–something you rarely did in life,
where you preferred to travel with a lover or a wife.

October found me no man’s wife, November found me gone
to take the road that we had planned. I would not be death’s pawn.

Then that December–– crueler than any month I’ll own.
That was the month I had the time to finally feel alone.

 

The prompt today was to write about “The cruelest month.”
http://www.napowrimo.net/day-four-4/

After Fifteen Years

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(If you are viewing this in the Reader, poem will not be formatted correctly.  Please click on the blog title above the photo to view this post from my blog where it will be in the correct shape.)

After 15 Years

Your memory                                                   cuts so sharply
through my dream’s beginning that I wake,
gasping like a fish on the sand
left by some fisherman
too intent upon his next catch
to end it cleanly.

In its tight skin,
I gasp for air,
rise as it cannot rise
and like you cannot rise
out to that night sea air
which is the only coolness
in a month of burned days.

My memory, curving round,
pulls in the memory of you
like gills seeking to understand
the waterless air.

Landed by some bigger fisherman
whose bait you couldn’t resist,
“Oh,” you said, just “Oh,”
before you took the hook,
slipping from my grasp
as I held on, held on,
let go.

Vocabulary Lesson: The 7 Word Challenge

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https://7words2inspire.wordpress.com/2015/09/26/word-list-week-4/ Write a story or poem making use of as many of these words as you wish: (oneiric cigar shenanigans cold-cocked finish sun-dried knickers) To save you the bother of checking them off, I’ll tell you I used them all—in order. The unbelievers can check them off anyway if they wish.

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                                              Vocabulary Lesson

She was more than irritated. Pissed, really, as she thumbed through the dictionary in search of the word “oneiric.” Any word that needed to be looked up didn’t belong in a “Dear Jane” letter anyway–as though to the very end he was trying to demonstrate his superiority—her inferiority.

Fuck! She slammed the dictionary to the floor, picked up the half-smoked cigar he’d left in the ashtray last night, relit it and surveyed the new paper cut on her index finger. Just one more of his shenanigans, she thought. Right after he’d cold-cocked her with the news that he and she were finished—that he was leaving her FOR HER MOTHER!!!!!!, he’d lit up his Cubano for one more puff before grinding it out and handing her this letter, telling her not to open it until he’d gone.

His finish had been pretty much like their beginning—with him ending up on the floor. But this time she was standing over him rather than lying on top of him. Idly, she flicked an ash into his open mouth, hitting him squarely on his tongue. The sun-dried blood on his lip looked like the smudge of a lover’s lipstick. Around his head were the remains of the crystal candlestick her mother had given them for their wedding.  She sucked at the paper cut, then at the gash across her palm that she had gotten from a shard of the candlestick that had taken a far smaller part out of her than it had out of him.

Far away in the kitchen, the phone rang and rang. Probably her mother. Well, let her get her knickers in a bunch waiting for him. Let her think (for as long as she could put off coming to investigate) that her daughter had reclaimed her property. She was in possession for now and everyone knew possession was 9/10ths of the law. She took another long draw before examining her wounds again.

Then, her curiosity getting the better of her, she moved back to the dictionary to thumb through the o’s. When she’d found the word, she chuckled and looked back at her lost love. Gone from this world, but no one would ever know it if she just shut his jaw and wiped off the bloodstain. As a matter of fact, he’d look downright oneiric!


If you want to join in the fun, post your story or poem HERE.

Word List for Week #4 – Submit your creativity to 7 Words!!

Routes Laid Out by Heavenly Bodies

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Routes Laid Out by Heavenly Bodies

The road of the moon
on the water
is a bridge
between us
leading me
to our new self.

When I am ready
to return
to what I was
before you,
that road
has vanished

but the sun
lights a different
pathway
and sends my shadow
ahead like a door
I seek to enter.

The oldest moon,
the sun at its birth
or just before its death
create  in us
just the suggestion
of a road.

That is why we rise early
for the sunrise,
gather for the sunset,
spill old blood,
howl howl
at the open moon.

This poem meets both prompts today. The NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a poem about a bridge. and the WordPress prompt was  “When the full moon happens, you turn into a person who is the opposite of who you normally are.  Describe this new you.”

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/the-full-moon/

Rings of Saturn

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The Prompt: Weaving the Threads–Draft a post with three parts, each unrelated to the other, but create a common thread between them by including the same item — an object, a symbol, a place — in each part.

Rings of Saturn

I had taken off my wedding ring years before. How typical of me that I would finally put it on again after he died. I don’t know why I do these things. Perhaps it was easier to be married to a dead man, or perhaps I felt he had finally atoned for his bad behavior, but suddenly that symbol had more significance than it had come to have in life. That sainthood of departure. I’d seen it happen again and again, but I had never been one to run with the pack and so it surprised me so much when I looked down one day and saw his ring on my finger again that I took it off and it has resided in that heart-shaped jewelry box ever since. That jewelry box with the little slit-compartment for rings that my sister’s friend had brought as a hostess gift when she had come to visit during that long year after his death when everyone came out of the woodwork to come visit.

Draw a ring around the old. Ring in the new in multiples. Duplication has become such a science–the craftsman thrown out of the ring. With the new three-dimensional copier, what cannot be duplicated, if plastic is your creation material of choice? A plastic gun—complete down to the bullet in its chamber. A perfect functioning model of anything with moving parts. Can each grain of gunpowder be duplicated? One ringie dingie, two ringie dingies. Floating away on the surface of the lake of forget. Is that giving up? Ringing the final buzzer? Burning the evidence in a ring of fire? Burning bridges? A phone rings and rings in the distance. It has that ring of authenticity, but that does not mean it is real.

Ring of thieves. One by one, the days steal my life away. Time is that one thing no one has control over—even Einstein or Hawking who perhaps understood it more than anyone. Estee Lauder, Timex, Time, Incorporated–all profit by time but none have conquered it. We are all in the ring with it whether we know it or not. Others may take the black eyes or sound the buzzer, but we are all really fighting the same fight. The smoothest face still wrinkles and the most beautiful voice grows shrill with age or disappears. Buzzers go silent and the arms holding up the signs go saggy. Ring around the rosie. Ring around the rosie. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/weaving-the-threads/

Offers

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Offers

When he asked me to marry him
and when we had to bury him–
these times inevitably set
wherein we find that we must let
nature have its way with us.
It does no good to rant and fuss.
Life’s made to reward, then abuse.
Its vagaries we can’t refuse.

All is part and parcel to
the next thing that we’re meant to do.
Good comes from bad and bad from good.
Birth, courtship, marriage, parenthood
fill our lives in marching order,
but every joy must have its border.
Birth leads to death. Love’s often lost.
To release life’s pleasures is the cost

of having and enjoying them.
Coal under pressure becomes a gem.
Remembering this must get you through
the next trial that’s set up for you.
Every day’s  an offer  you can’t refuse–
another pleasure to gain, then lose.
Life’s losses are also its seeds.
We lose our wants to gain our needs.

The Prompt: Set the timer for ten minutes and then tell us about an offer you couldn’t refuse.

New World Miracle

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The Prompt: An Extreme Tale—“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. When was the last time that sentence accurately described your life?

Note:  For the ninth day in a row, I (along with several other bloggers) have not been able to pingback to the Daily Prompts page.  If you are able to, can you mention this poem in your blog and pingback to me?  WordPress doesn’t seem to be doing anything about this problem, although we’ve written numerous times!  Thanks.

I’ve told the second part of this story in an earlier post.  Now, here is the beginning and the ending.  One day I’ll tell the in-between.


New World Miracle
(Ethiopia, 1973-74)

Black Tiger in safari jacket
you told me
hyenas in the hills
would attack the mule if I tried
to ride alone
from the lowland landing field
to Lalibela.

By
sunset
we had reached
the high plateaus
sheep crying
miles away
shepherds calling
mile on mile.

In this high air
heard from mountaintop
to mountaintop
from valley
lifting to plateaus above
you with Afro out to here
admitted the hyenas were a lie
took my picture
tucked my camera in your pocket
pulled me up
to you
and
there was no
resistance
in
this
air.

I was
enamored
of the falling sun
the cries of shepherds
your hair
your jacket
your clean mouth
white teeth
and beautiful
tall rest of you.
I had always needed
to feel like this.
Giddy.
Your kiss pulled me in then
ricocheted
to valleys
under valleys
under valleys.
Always something
under
something else.

We were at the edges
of the world.
We were at its
cracking rims.

And I can believe
in you
standing
on the rifted rock
above the canyons
still
I can’t imagine
you
in the valley
deeper in the valley
than the valley floor.

I can’t imagine you
dusted hair
eyes closed by clods
growing trees from your navel
pomegranates from your fingernails.

When you touched me
I grew
then I grew too far.

But nothing
since
has touched your warm
your brown
your hands
your mouth
where you touched
nothing since
has quite
touched.

In your country
where names
are only words
strung together
your name
Andu Alem Tamirat
meaning new world’s miracle.

You could have come with me
to grow invisible in California.
Instead you
died in
futile
revolution,
seeding
painful
memories.

Remember
how you used to climb
out of my dining room window
to the back yard compound
to pick orange waxy blossoms
from the pomegranate tree—
how you used to
tuck them
in my hair?

Wooden Heart

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Wooden Heart

He handed it to me without ceremony—a small leather bag, awl-punched and stitched together by hand. Its flap was held together by a clasp made from a two fishing line sinkers and a piece of woven wax linen. I unwound the wax linen and found inside a tiny wooden heart with his initials on one side, mine on the other. A small hole in the heart had a braided cord of wax linen strung through that was attached to the bag so that the heart could not be lost. He had woven more waxed linen into a neck cord. I was 39 years old when he gave me that incredible thing I never thought I would receive: his heart—as much of it as he could give. Continue reading →

Dia de Los Muertos, 2014

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Dia de los Muertos, 2014

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This is this year’s minimalist altar for my departed: husband Bob, Mother Pat and Father Ben. I wasn’t going to do one. Then Yolanda (my housekeeper) told me about a friend who didn’t  make a Dia de los Muertos altar for her mother who had recently died. This friend then went to see the elaborate offerings of her brothers and sisters, so she brought a rather poor specimen of a pumpkin and told them they could put that on her mother’s grave. That night she had a dream of walking through the graveyard. Every other grave was elaborately decorated with flowers and sweetly-scented candles and favorite foods of the departed: water, whiskey, tequila. When she got to her mother’s grave, there was no light and there were no offerings—only the one poor pumpkin. As she walked by, people shook their heads, and she left in shame. When she woke up, she went to her mother’s grave and took her fresh water, a candle, sweets, and all of the things her mother loved.

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It worked.  I assembled an altar. Yolanda looked at it and told another story about how the water and candle help to create a breeze that brings the scent of the favorite foods to the departed. I quickly added a candle and a small glass of water with an ice cube—as Bob did hate a lukewarm Coke! When the ice cube melted, I added a small red heart to take its place. If you look closely, you can see it in the bottom of the glass.

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It was my mother’s tradition to tuck a small box of Russell Stover candy into each of our Xmas stockings. One Xmas, we opened them to find only wrappers in each one. Over the course of the weeks before Xmas, our mother had opened each one, unable to resist eating the chocolates. So precedent decreed that I eat hers. You’ll see the empty papers littering the space around the box. (Yolanda, ever-respectful of tradition, helped by eating one piece.)

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Although my father raised black Angus and Hereford cattle, this is Mexico, after all, so I think he’d forgive the long horns. A donut and a 10 peso piece complete his offerings. Last year I put a small glass of milk with cornbread crushed in it—his favorite cocktail. But this year the ants have taken over our part of Mexico, so I didn’t dare.

I’ll Have to Go

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The Prompt: Finite Ceatures—At what age did you realize you were not immortal? How did you react to that discovery?

I’ll Have to Go

This journey of our lifetime is a one-way ride.
I realized the truth of this the day my father died.
But in the living of it, I forgot again—
concentrating on the present and where I had been
instead of thinking of the future and mortality.
There’s something in a busy life that sets the spirit free,
convincing us that we’re immortal. That we’ll always be.

The many times that I was made to see I might have died:
the time I was abducted and taken for a ride,
the time he held the gun up to my head and pulled the trigger,
as I fell to the street, somehow my life seemed to get bigger;
and I saw all of it at once, spread out there below me,
and somehow though I wasn’t dead, I felt that I was free,
and for awhile, I found it was enough to simply be.

There have been other times when death has had me in its clench:
the time not long ago when that limb missed me by an inch,
the time I nearly drowned when I knew I was gone for sure,
yet somehow, death rejected me—released me from its lure.
It’s just at night when I’m alone that all comes tumbling back
and I begin to calculate all that my life might lack,
and life becomes a tempting peddler opening his pack.

The places never visited, the loves I let pass by,
and all the other things I thought to do before I die
all tumble out to tempt me and I think perhaps I still
have some things to do before I climb that final hill.
I think, perhaps, there’s one more love. One journey yet or two.
So many things that I have left I always thought I’d do.
So I am getting ready—only waiting for my cue.

That’s why at night I lie awake, sometimes remembering.
At other times just wondering what this next year will bring.
If I am lucky, I have thirty years or more till death
takes away these memories and stills my final breath.
Until then, I’ll live life fully and go where I must go.
I’ll follow my own pathway and ignore the status quo.
Instead of drifting lazily, I’ll row and row and row!