...The space we stood around had been emptied
Into us to keep, it penetrated
Clearances that suddenly stood open.
High cries were felled and pure change happened.
- Seamus Heaney, from Clearances, VII
I.
On a too early day in May, I watched my mother die. There is simply no easy way to buffer that truth. I stood beside her bed, touching and not touching, hearing even now, fifteen years removed, her chest rattle as I bargained with an indifferent God. Just a bit more time though I knew she suffered. And regardless of all of those years I spent on my knees--the hard kneeler a kind of penance for sins committed and not--God was mute. Tight-lipped. Taciturn.
I never quite knew what it was I was listening for.
II.
Time passes like a list begun more than once, left tucked inside the pocket of a winter coat worn last season. This is how grief moves and fails to move. Memories arise from the least provocation like a wave that swamps me. And I am drowning here on a Tuesday morning on day too much like the day we set her in the ground--a too beautiful, too early spring day at that. I sit next to the grown daughter and her mom--both out for some talk, out for a pair of pedicures--nothing too goddamn special. And it's the ordinariness of it that most undoes me.
I am desperate for Heaney's pure change.
III.
There's little to know when burying the dead. Knowing is a false balm that does not soothe. Knowing is a way to stand still, like that cup of tea made and remade that is still waiting on the counter, long cooled and forgotten. With each lived moment, I edge closer to leaving and nothing terrifies me more than the thought of my son bargaining with some god on a too early, too spring morning. What words will he proffer? Have I even taught him how to listen? Language is a vice--one part fixed, one part moving--a bolt through the heart.
I tell you love is nothing if not epic.
I.
 |
| Forgetfulness (M.A. Reilly, 2010) |
I never quite knew what it was I was listening for.
II.
Time passes like a list begun more than once, left tucked inside the pocket of a winter coat worn last season. This is how grief moves and fails to move. Memories arise from the least provocation like a wave that swamps me. And I am drowning here on a Tuesday morning on day too much like the day we set her in the ground--a too beautiful, too early spring day at that. I sit next to the grown daughter and her mom--both out for some talk, out for a pair of pedicures--nothing too goddamn special. And it's the ordinariness of it that most undoes me.
I am desperate for Heaney's pure change.
III.
There's little to know when burying the dead. Knowing is a false balm that does not soothe. Knowing is a way to stand still, like that cup of tea made and remade that is still waiting on the counter, long cooled and forgotten. With each lived moment, I edge closer to leaving and nothing terrifies me more than the thought of my son bargaining with some god on a too early, too spring morning. What words will he proffer? Have I even taught him how to listen? Language is a vice--one part fixed, one part moving--a bolt through the heart.
I tell you love is nothing if not epic.
