Category: Death & Dying

Life Smells

Published on by geriatric pilgrim2 Comments
Illustration by Lisa Keppeler. Used with her kind permission.

~

It’s September, 2019 and ten weeks after my heart surgery and I’m taking my first walk in the woods since then and the first thing I notice is the fecund smell of fallen leaves and pine needles and dying trees…

and the scents of hay and cows and horses in my great-grandfather’s barn, and the waft of fried onions and potatoes in Nanny and Grampy Lufkin’s house, and the whiff of perfume and cigarettes in Nanny Cleaves’s apartment, and the aroma of Mom’s fresh baked bread on Saturday mornings…

and a few years later: the earthy odors of the market garden where I worked summers, the pungence of wet towels, dirty socks and jockstraps in the locker-room beneath the gym where I spent so much time… 

and the fragrances of my Aqua Velva, and her White Shoulders blending in the back seat of the family Ford …

and later still: the salt smack of ocean breeze thru the spruce trees around our camp in the early days of marriage when love was new and life’s possibilities seemed endless…

and because autumn is when things die, memory sniffs the acrid smoke from the Old Town Paper Company as I drift, bitter and aimless, across the university campus, no longer the high school bigshot and no idea who the hell I am or where I’m going…

 and then the dank reek of the dregs of the pipe tobacco I used to smoke during the last years of that first marriage…

and the stench of shit and disinfectant in the hospital where my daughter lay dying, when I learned how life and love can also waste away and die… 

and thoughts of shit spark smells of steaming cow flaps in Scottish pastures through which Mary Lee and I hike, and aromas of shawarma, spices, and pita bread mingled with the dust of pilgrims in the Old City of Jerusalem, and the sweet scent of apple tea in Turkey and animal musk on the Serengeti and incense wafting up from the altar into the stony steeple of Iona Abbey—reminders that I not only didn’t die, but flourished—

and the smell of Mary Lee lying beside me in the morning, and the fresh, slightly sweet scent of our newborn grandchild, and before I know it, going into the school building to pick up that grandchild where the fragrance of chalk and cleaners and young bodies take me back to my years as a public-school teacher—intimations that love is stronger than death…

and although I’m surrounded by the smells of dead and dying vegetation and the lingering sickly scent of Mupirocin with which I swabbed my nose prior to and after heart surgery, the decay upon which I walk and which I smell teems with the bouquet of resurrection.

~

The Highways

Published on by geriatric pilgrim7 Comments
Nova Scotia highway

~

‘Be not afraid.’ Those words don’t say ‘Have no fear.’ Instead, they say I don’t need to be my fear.—Parker Palmer

~

So much to fear,

so I fled to the caverns

and sat in the gathering darkness

 around my tiny fire.

I heard the earth, consumed 

by fire and poison, cry out in agony.

Insane voices screamed threats.

The air reeked of corruption.

Gunshots echoed in the canyons.

Grieving parents wept.

I felt my strength ebbing as

I sensed the valley of the shadow below.

How I longed for the sky to light up 

and a voice from the heavens 

thunder, “Be Not Afraid!”

and an angel descend to

sheathe me in unconquerable courage.

But in the silence amidst the tumult 

and the suffering, an old friend 

I’ve never met said, 

“‘Be not afraid’ doesn’t mean ‘Have no fear,’ 

but rather, ‘do not be your fear.’”

I raised my eyes and looked back at my journey,

not only at the deep crevices of death

and quicksands of despair,

but at hilltops of hope,

ponds of trust,

forests of generosity,

fields of strength,

oceans of love,

and saw fear was but part of the landscape.

Therefore, I have risen from the ashes,

left the caverns,

and resumed the journey,

resolving to live on the highways

and not in the hollows,

cherishing each rock on the road.

The sun has not yet set.

Arizona sunrise

~ ~

Mid-December’s Black Ice

Published on by geriatric pilgrim10 Comments
Photo from Wikipedia (but it could have been in front of my house)

◊

Yesterday’s snow became rain

before the temperature dropped

back into the teens, so that

this morning, sunshine glistens 

on the icy road over 

which I walk—an eighty-year-

old man trying to find his 

way during this season of 

Joy to the World, while he grieves

the anniversary of 

 his child’s death, and ponders what’s 

next with curiosity 

glazed with fear, poking along 

flat-footed, carefully pick-

ing his way, concentrating 

on not falling, focused on 

keeping that icy balance. 

◊

Broomstick Season

Published on by geriatric pilgrim12 Comments

~

The trees that can have given up their leaves—

the reds and golds you see in magazines,

(though dry and chewed and rotting with black mold)—

standing outlined against the sky: broom sticks

whose branches seem about to sweep the clouds.

~

Hard not to recall those who died this month:

a grandmother, father, mother-in-law,

Thanksgivings when their absence filled our plates.

The Ronald McDonald House Thanksgiving

of turkey, fear, anxiety, and tears,

as my wife and her sons saw my daughter

for what we all knew would be the last time.

~

Well into the November of my life,

I mourn the green and teeming dreams I had,

The gaudy colored leaves of happiness,

chewed by anger and blackened by misdeeds.

Now naked of ambition, strength, shame, guilt,

but rooted in the rocky soil of Grace,

supported by my friends and families,

I raise my bony, brittle arms to sweep

away remorse, and cry in gratitude:

Thank you, thank you, and thank you, for it all.

~ ~

Walking the College Campus at 6:30 A.M. on the 80th Anniversary of of the Bombing of Hiroshima

Published on by geriatric pilgrim4 Comments

#

Police sirens fade as I pass through the

memorial gate to an empty quad,

where morning sun reflects off the windows

of old brick buildings, deserted now of

the footsteps and voices, the ambitions,

anxieties, astonishment, fatigue,

confusion, gratitude, egotism,

disappointments, hangovers, and regret

usually throbbing throughout the halls.

Even in the quiet of the morning,

a deeper silence seems to emanate

from these buildings, a collective wisdom—

coalesced and alive—which assures me:

when all is said and done, all shall be well.

The Chapel at Bowdoin College: Painting by Tim Banks

#

Geriatric Passion

Published on by geriatric pilgrim4 Comments

“My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate.”

                                                                                                            —Florida Scott Maxwell

◊

Yes, but not like some geriatric stud

who’s still able each night to rock and roll;

Instead, imagine some gnarled tree in bud,

A blazing fire reduced to one red coal.

◊

Three barred owls in a tree, a rainbow,

My sleeping wife, a grandchild’s happy voice,

A doo-op tune, dark chocolate, will now

Bring forth ejaculations of clear joy.

◊

But then I have these night sweats full of fear.

Each day brings new regret for my old wrongs.

I rage for reasons that remain unclear

and weep at maudlin films and country songs.

◊

The plot gets more intense the more I age

As life’s last chapter moves towards life’s last page.

´◊

Duende

Published on by geriatric pilgrim6 Comments

◊◊

Duende:…[T]he “bitter root” of human existence, what Lorca referred to as “the pain that has no explanation” … and the source of much great art.—Christopher Maurer

◊

After the rain, the trees are weeping,

tears glistening in the setting sun. 

And suddenly

◊

I feel the fierce force flowing through my veins 

along with the red cells and white cells and platelets, 

to and from the heart (the center of grief, I heard somewhere). 

◊

I wail once more my family’s demise:

 my father’s frightened eyes, my mother’s waxy hands,

  my daughter’s last labored breaths.

´◊

I recoil as if for the first time at

old failures, sins, embarrassments, what-ifs

 that float before me like dead fish.

◊

I watch my friends diminish—

cancer, Parkinson’s, heart problems, Alzheimer’s—

I shave an old man’s face.

◊

This week, I’ll pray, write a poem, plant flowers in the family cemetery, meet friends,

take grandchildren for ice cream, work in my garden, make love to my wife, 

tenacity momentarily victorious. 

◊

Still, coursing through my triumphs like a deep and dark river,

demolishing and nourishing as it surges to the sea, 

Duende.

◊◊

Querencia

Published on by geriatric pilgrim1 Comment

~

…from the Spanish verb “querer,” to want, desire, love; an emotional inclination toward a location; a home ground, a favorite place.—Wikipedia.

~

“A querencia is a place the bull naturally wants to go to in the ring… In this place he feels that he has his back against the wall and in his querencia he is inestimably more dangerous and almost impossible to kill.” Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon.

~

Or man-cave or refuge or sanctuary or study or simply the room at the end of the hall where I hang out wrapping it around me like a favorite bathrobe or suit of armor depending…

where I 

gaze at pictures of my wife ML looking radiant in her new clerical collar despite her son’s having left to live on the West Coast… my daughter Laurie’s watercolor she painted before her cancer diagnosis of a blue hand reaching up thru brown rocks toward bright flower petals … my brother sister & me skunk as a drunk before I sobered up … ML’s boys, Laurie & me swimming on Mount Desert Island when I thought we could blend our families… grandchildren sitting in my lap, playing by the river, hiking in the woods when we did…a panorama of Banjo Camp North where I named my banjo Joy… Jerry, Marty, & I—6’2” then— the Fish Factory Trio, singing “The Old Dope Pedler” at a high school variety show in 1961… four views of the Desert House of Prayer outside Tucson, Arizona where ML & I danced in the desert under a full moon Easter morning in 2001… a lioness sunning herself on a rock on the Serengeti Plains in 2018…

keep mementos such as a contestant pin from the 1961 L&M State Basketball Championship…three vintage baseball caps of my favorite teams… the skin of a rattlesnake I killed in Idaho in 1962…diaries going back to 1963…autographed books by heroes, mentors, friends and former students … cards from grandchildren… three bowls of rocks from my travels…rocks from those travels too big for bowls… a felt fedora covered in pins from airports around the world… a turkey feather from a walk in the woods… four clam shells from walks on the beach… a letter holder my father made for my mother when they were in high school… a wooden platter I remember him carving in the evenings after he’d come out of the Army & was working as an apprentice carpenter & we didn’t have a TV… my grandmother’s desk… 

lose and find myself in books of non-fiction, fiction, poetry…books about travel, Maine, writing, spirituality… five banjos…one guitar…one harmonica…one mouth-harp… one Vietnamese flute… ten songbooks… two file cabinets of old writing… two coffee cups of pens…my current diary… a yellow legal pad of paper… a computer … 

look out the window at a world of uncertainty for my country & my own life & those I love holding my favorite pen like Excalibur my diary like a shield enthroned in my ergonomic office chair feeling inestimably more dangerous & almost impossible to kill…

~ ~

To Friends who Tell me I Need to Lighten Up

Published on by geriatric pilgrim4 Comments
What can I say? I like clouds in my sky.

~ ~

Thank you for your concern 

about my mental health, 

but I’d rather embrace 

my grief and fear

as if they were gassy grandparents 

who keep my school photographs 

on their refrigerator

to show my yearly growth

than banish the old farts 

to the basement 

and have them pound 

the floor under me 

with a broom handle.

~

Don’t get me wrong, friends, 

I do count my blessings, 

I am grateful for health, family, friends.

And I don’t pretend to understand 

what it’s like trying to stay afloat

in the black seas of chronic depression.

But happiness, I’ve discovered, 

can become complacency, 

which can be a stagnant pond 

swarming with blackflies.

~

I find more blessings to count, 

more for which to be grateful, 

after having been broken open 

by the deaths, destruction, decay around me, 

some of which I’ve caused, 

some of which I haven’t deserved, 

and some of which is just life.

~

Without looking at my grief, 

I’m not able to recognize my joy. 

And I don’t mean glancing at loss 

the way I rubberneck 

at an accident on the highway.

I mean reentering the suffering, 

scrutinizing the fears, 

which means talking 

and writing about them.

~

My urge to create begins in loss, 

my gratitude begins in fear, 

my compassion begins in pain, 

and my joy begins in sorrow.

~

All of which, I guess, is to say:

I’d rather be whole than happy.

~ ~

Gazebo

Published on by geriatric pilgrim6 Comments

~

“We are saved in the end by the things that ignore us.”— Andrew Harvey

~

At the Spiritual Renewal Center in Arizona

I’m not feeling renewed spiritually or otherwise.

Dusty desert wind sears my lungs as I sit in 90° heat,

stuck to a faded plastic chair in a rundown gazebo—

rotting floor…peeling paint… broken railings—

good place, I think, for an octogenarian

with COPD, a weak heart. and arthritic joints.

Just six years ago I walked the nearby desert trails 

for miles past petroglyphs and rattlesnakes,

up rocky canyons and down sandy washes.    

This morning, I reached for my inhaler after 20 minutes 

and turned back feeling old and dilapidated.

Now, I sit in this decaying gazebo awfulizing about my future:

a sudden heart attack that strikes me down

before I can say good-bye to those I’ve loved, 

or a stroke which leaves me paralyzed and drooling 

while others change their lives to look after me,

or worse, dementia, unable even to say thank you for caring.

Which leads me to wonder: Will I be missed when I’m gone?

Certainly not by the flat cumulous clouds 

floating over the hills on the horizon

 or the wind through the prickly pear, cholla, barrel,

organ pipe and ocotillo cactus,

 not to mention the saguaro standing

with arms raised to the heavens,

 and certainly not by the coyotes 

barking from the copper-colored hills behind me, 

or the doves or cardinals or flycatchers or thrashers 

or warblers or wrens or quails,

nor, come to think of it, by the yellow blossoms

from the palo verdi  blowing in the desert wind, gilding

the rotten gazebo floor and my decrepitude 

with the golden certainty of new life. 

~