In Memoriam
I was correct in the last entry -- Grandma was making her final approach to death.
Early last Friday morning, my mom had a dream. As she described it in a subsequent email: "Mom was in her hospital bed looking like she did here at the house. The bed was in a parking lot outside of a restaurant. Lots of cars and people and busy-ness - something about a poisoning. I was looking for Mom and finally found her hospital bed pushed up against the building wall. I turned briefly to call for your dad. When I turned back, Madame Tuptin [a cat that had been my grandmother's long before I was born] was curled up next to Mom’s head. Mom looked just like she did when she was younger - dark, silky, full hair, young face. Mom was sitting up and said, 'Oh, I feel so much better.' Then, the alarm rang. What is interesting is that on Friday, we really felt that Mom was already gone. The body was breathing on automatic pilot, so to speak." Grandma didn't wake up after that, and officially died a few hours after dawn on Saturday.
My parents found a poem, written by Stephen Garnaas-Holmes:
Being Trees in Autumn
These trees in Buddhist saffron robes,
renouncing everything,
becoming naked without fear,
in wind that is a part of them,
disclose a beauty in this death,
become new shapes, interior.
To live they cannot hoard;
this losing, too, is growth.
New shapes emerge, new vision clears.
Surrender strengthens in the soul
another song.
This emptying is confidence
in spring, but more - a faithing
in the growth that’s come before,
a counting of the gifts
and then releasing one by one,
so as to give again.
knowing growth is not a season,
but is in the root of things.
This is no losing,
but a becoming.
Coveting such openness
of limb and heart and hand,
such bareness in the singing,
I only now discover that I want
this wind, blowing where it will,
within.
Several days after that, a poem came to me as well:
In Memoriam
Eating the wafer last Sunday I remembered
The many deaths I have been given.
Friends, and family, and food;
The sudden crunch, the crumble, and the slow decay --
Until nothing lingers but the taste of salt.
The taste of salt; and afterwards, the cup.
Again, the lives poured out for mine,
So many sacrifices, so much love,
The lesson is the same.
The lesson of the grape, the wheat, the loss of all that is.
To be poured out in offering and disappear --
A splash of blood within the mouth of God.
Early last Friday morning, my mom had a dream. As she described it in a subsequent email: "Mom was in her hospital bed looking like she did here at the house. The bed was in a parking lot outside of a restaurant. Lots of cars and people and busy-ness - something about a poisoning. I was looking for Mom and finally found her hospital bed pushed up against the building wall. I turned briefly to call for your dad. When I turned back, Madame Tuptin [a cat that had been my grandmother's long before I was born] was curled up next to Mom’s head. Mom looked just like she did when she was younger - dark, silky, full hair, young face. Mom was sitting up and said, 'Oh, I feel so much better.' Then, the alarm rang. What is interesting is that on Friday, we really felt that Mom was already gone. The body was breathing on automatic pilot, so to speak." Grandma didn't wake up after that, and officially died a few hours after dawn on Saturday.
My parents found a poem, written by Stephen Garnaas-Holmes:
Being Trees in Autumn
These trees in Buddhist saffron robes,
renouncing everything,
becoming naked without fear,
in wind that is a part of them,
disclose a beauty in this death,
become new shapes, interior.
To live they cannot hoard;
this losing, too, is growth.
New shapes emerge, new vision clears.
Surrender strengthens in the soul
another song.
This emptying is confidence
in spring, but more - a faithing
in the growth that’s come before,
a counting of the gifts
and then releasing one by one,
so as to give again.
knowing growth is not a season,
but is in the root of things.
This is no losing,
but a becoming.
Coveting such openness
of limb and heart and hand,
such bareness in the singing,
I only now discover that I want
this wind, blowing where it will,
within.
Several days after that, a poem came to me as well:
In Memoriam
Eating the wafer last Sunday I remembered
The many deaths I have been given.
Friends, and family, and food;
The sudden crunch, the crumble, and the slow decay --
Until nothing lingers but the taste of salt.
The taste of salt; and afterwards, the cup.
Again, the lives poured out for mine,
So many sacrifices, so much love,
The lesson is the same.
The lesson of the grape, the wheat, the loss of all that is.
To be poured out in offering and disappear --
A splash of blood within the mouth of God.