Thank you for your lovely and heartfelt sharings Pádraig!!!
I never knew my paternal grandmother personally. She passed on from a sudden relapse of cancer when I was very young.
The only impression I have of her is a picture of her beaming with joy while standing by my grandfather’s side.
I like to think I inherited some of her joyfulness. It’s entirely possible that her sunny disposition was where my father got his from. Perhaps it was then gifted to me.
For me, this nicely illustrates how the people we love never really leave us, although they may die.
“A part of us dies with them; a part of them lives on in us.” That’s one of my favourite sayings.
So while I may have never gotten to really know my grandmother, in a sense, I do know her.
She lives on in my father, in her pictures, in my uncle and my aunt and in me.
I believe lives are like songs. They arise from silence and end in silence, but those who have heard them can sing them again.
Both of my parents are dead—my mother when I was a child, and my father in the middle of 2020 (one of the quiet non-COVID deaths that year). The message I get from them is a basic one, to not let fear devour my time and instead to live in it. Sometimes I’m able to, sometimes not. In this world, there are days when even getting out of bed can feel like a resurrection.
As a cultural and former Catholic, I’m sending you a good and peaceful Easter, and gratitude for everyone’s generosity. This weekly message certainly helps me see a world and time I want to live in.
I had an encounter with my dad on his birthday this past October; he has been deceased for nine years. This encounter prompted the following poem, “This Moment is Forever.”
I extend my regards and hope and peace to all who are observing holy seasons.
I have found guidance in the words of the writers of the Bible (long dead) in the prompts and examples to practice kindness, compassion, humility, gentleness, and patience.
As the angry voice of my father still sounds in my ears long past his death, I try hard not to raise my own voice in anger, and have sought others who do not often raise their voices in anger. My mother, who died when I was 18, speaks to me as a mourning dove. While the words are not specific, the sound is gentle and reassuring. As doves are found in many places, may we listen for their peaceful sounds. Peace I leave with you.
My sister died on February 2, 2020. It is a palindrome date if written in numbers: 02022020--coming and going are the same. The cause was cancer and there had been enough time for very special friends to come from the state of Washington on the west coast to South Carolina to help settle affairs. They all shared a love of dogs and one of them had taken my sister's two beloved pets to Washington a few weeks before, to live out the rest of their lives. On the day she died, a little before 7 in the morning, I was alone with her in the hospital room. When the moment of passing was over, I called her friends, who were staying in a hotel around the corner from the hospital. The friend who had taken the dogs called her husband to tell him. He said, "Well, that explains it." A little before 4 in the morning, Paciific Time, the dogs had burst into a frenzy of barking, something they had never done before. They were inside the house, not out in the yard where they might have been reacting to a wild critter. Her friends and I agreed that her spirit must have gone to see them to say goodbye, before moving on to whatever comes next. My sister identified as a spiritualist. I think her message to me was: "Try to suspend your resistance and skepticism; try to remain open to future connections." I am trying, and poetry helps. I am so glad I will be able to meet you when you come to Camden in May, just up the road from here I live in Maine.
I recently wrote a poem about my grandmothers pain & suffering. It felt beautiful to attempt to hear her & to free her of her suffering, to ask that the pain that may have been passed down the female line be set free & returned peacefully to the divine (whatever one's own interpretation of this is). It felt like for a short time she resurrected & reunited with us when I read the poem at her old home. There is reference in the poem to the children she lost (4 in pregnancy, 2 at birth & a further 7 as adults). I hadn't thought of it like this before but giving them a voice too felt like a resurrection 🙏 I feel honoured to have been chosen to do this small but meaningful act for my ancestors.
I gave a talk this weekend about the power of growth and gardens spurred on by reflections on my father’s death. There were no particular words of his that I reflected upon, but as I spoke I couldn’t help but think of him as a seed that was planted so that the garden that has become my life could grow.
I am a wild gardener. I love watching the plants that I’ve put into the ground grow, but I also love watching the world that grows up between their stalks. I of course remove the larger plants that grow up in the soil near them to give my chosen plants room to grow. But I don’t begrudge the dandelions and other plants for wanting to be in that space, anymore than the clover that grows low, like a sweet green bed waiting to lain upon.
I am the gardener and I am also the garden. In a healthy garden, we plant the seeds, watch them sprout, and care for each plant as its stalk rises from the soil, and its roots join a world beyond our eyes. It is this world, beyond the veil, that the wild gardener knows exists, and can control to some degree, that is really healthy when there is a bit of wildness at play. The rhizomatic and mycelial world that connects this biosphere below the surface and in the air is where the beauty of existence, of connection, comes to life.
I weep damn near everyday for the pain and loss that accompanies the destruction of war, and the murder of innocents in Gaza, and I fear that some of the seeds being planted there are seeds of hatred that will become disastrous blooms. But I hope, god I hope, that the deaths of the littlest ones will lead the people to something greater, to a more beautiful and peaceful future, where the conquerors are are expelled from the garden to kneel in the dust, and the peaceful may lay down in green of becoming.
I have received good advice over the years, but none like the advice I got from my father many, many years ago when I first started working. I was a single parent in a very stressful, demanding job. I had life pulling me in every direction and it was taking a toll on my health: emotional, physical, and spiritual. My father told me to “set my priorities”, and everything will fall into place. And that is what I did. My daughter was number one. When work asked me to travel or work late I just explained my situation and said “no”, not at this time. Yes, I got passed up for promotions, etc…. , but that changed over the years. I loved my job, but my family more. I have used the “set my priorities” advice my whole life, and it has never failed me. My dad has been gone for 14 years, but I am connected to him in so many ways, this being just one example. I was so lucky to win the parent lottery.
Thank you. This was just what I needed to read today, as another mediocre Catholic. The voices of the dead are, I feel, imploring us to live and live fully.
Before my birth, my mother had unnamed still-born twins followed by Henry, who died a few weeks old.
Henry would have been my elder brother (if ...), instead of which I later became elder brother to William.
Like our grandfather, "Ganna" (I listen to Ganna telling me again, "DIN": do it now), Henry would have been a good man. He stands somewhere behind, above, alongside me and I listen to him as I plant and sow, weed and mow, and as I shoulder the business of the day. I carry Henry in my brow. Only when I die will he die, with me.
In the support groups I facilitated with bereaved parents, one of the challenging aspects of that grief was how to carry our child with us iinto the rest of our lives. What to do with the yearning? How to shelter the memories? Where to put the pain of their absence? Each parent came to their own way of how to imagine that. For me, Matt became again part of me . . . something like the lining of my soul. His presence is with me like my very breath and his voice echoes in my mind with the words he would say or the hopes he had for himself. The surprise of that is that now his presence never leaves me. When we must let go of the tangible, we are given a presence that never dies.
Thank you Padraig once again for your thoughtful and provocative reflections. A dear friend died from brain injuries suffered in a horrific cycle crash two weeks ago. He died at 73. He was sure he would make 100. And I always knew he would outlive me. The first voice I hear now is mine: "what the heck!". And yet another voice, is it mine or his, tells me each day I live with meaning and attention is a way that he can live on through me. A kind of resurrection if you will. And paying attention means to look unflinchingly at what is ahead of me, even my own death (which I hope is many years away but who knows!). My friend was a pasionate long-distance cyclist. His last big trip, last year, was from Azerbaijan to Istanbul. What I hear him say is that he keeps riding on somewhere! And that as I keep riding (metaphorically) he rides with me. Yes, his death sure threw me. Lots of emotional brusiing. But I hear him laugh and say: "back in the saddle, old boy, back in the saddle". And this writing reflection of mine here is my way of saying I am back, however tenderly, in the saddle. My saddle was never a bike saddle ( I hate cycling!) but writing is the saddle where I sit best. And where I sit looking forward today. Thank you Padraig for inspiring this along with so many others, holding fierce griefs of lost beloveds, moving on.
My friend and colleague Bill died a few years ago. Whenever he visited some place he would send me post cards with pithy words of advice. One arrived from New York City with a drawing of Ben Shahn on the front with these words, “Teach thy tongue to say “I do not know” and thou shalt progress.”
My relationship with my mother was …. complicated. She was unpredictable - sometimes the most compassionate of humans (and funny! Artistic! Intelligent!), but other times she wasn’t enough for her demons and they lashed out at us too (and our friends, spouses, grocery store clerks). Mental illness wasn’t discussed publicly at that time, so my brother and I were torn between the pain of thinking it was our fault, and the pain of disliking this woman we loved so dearly. But it’s also a story about the human species and hope… not “nature *vs* nurture”, but human nature *to* nurture… like the resilience of a plant that finds its way through a crack in the pavement. I find reading and writing poetry is like that crack - an open invitation to this truth.
Another mediocre Catholic raising her hand! This: "I believe lives are like songs. They arise from silence and end in silence, but those who have heard them can sing them again."
At my yoga studio yesterday, a fellow student said I looked as though I was struggling with an important question and I was/I am. That question is, how do I define myself as a person of Faith who is not interested in Religion? I recently had an incredible experience after signing up for a series of talks hosted by Anamchara Books on Howard Thurman, the American author, philosopher, and advisor to Martin Luther King. I had no idea what I'd signed up for (I often wander through open doors) and I ended up in a small group of mostly retired pastors of different Christian faiths and old school style Berrigan Brothers activists from across the US. Wow! Welcoming, lovely, thoughtful. I've also signed up/with the US Mennonite community who are actively advocating and "singing" for peace in Gaza. All these young people out there joining the conversation on what it looks like to be a follower of Christ and placing action behind their Faith. And they sing wherever they go.
There is a video on YouTube of a group of Mennonites in the US Capitol building singing as they are arrested and removed from the Rotunda. Find it and watch it if you have time. It's Easter Sunday, the day of the resurrection. Are you singing?
Thank you for your lovely and heartfelt sharings Pádraig!!!
I never knew my paternal grandmother personally. She passed on from a sudden relapse of cancer when I was very young.
The only impression I have of her is a picture of her beaming with joy while standing by my grandfather’s side.
I like to think I inherited some of her joyfulness. It’s entirely possible that her sunny disposition was where my father got his from. Perhaps it was then gifted to me.
For me, this nicely illustrates how the people we love never really leave us, although they may die.
“A part of us dies with them; a part of them lives on in us.” That’s one of my favourite sayings.
So while I may have never gotten to really know my grandmother, in a sense, I do know her.
She lives on in my father, in her pictures, in my uncle and my aunt and in me.
I believe lives are like songs. They arise from silence and end in silence, but those who have heard them can sing them again.
Both of my parents are dead—my mother when I was a child, and my father in the middle of 2020 (one of the quiet non-COVID deaths that year). The message I get from them is a basic one, to not let fear devour my time and instead to live in it. Sometimes I’m able to, sometimes not. In this world, there are days when even getting out of bed can feel like a resurrection.
As a cultural and former Catholic, I’m sending you a good and peaceful Easter, and gratitude for everyone’s generosity. This weekly message certainly helps me see a world and time I want to live in.
I had an encounter with my dad on his birthday this past October; he has been deceased for nine years. This encounter prompted the following poem, “This Moment is Forever.”
Alone
with my dad
He’s lying
on a clunky hospital bed
in the middle of his bedroom
eyes shut
each breath
a gasp
is he in distress
Time
has at once
both slowed and expanded
“Dad, can you hear me?”
Shall you and I then listen
as we often have
to our favorite Irish sage
for this will be our prayer
to know that we are side by side
as we let his words ease into our bodies
Your breath, quieting
your body, stills
have you moved beyond
Over nine years have passed
but no moment is ever lost
alone
with my dad
on this day of his birth
“Do you hear me, Michael?”
“I do!”
I extend my regards and hope and peace to all who are observing holy seasons.
I have found guidance in the words of the writers of the Bible (long dead) in the prompts and examples to practice kindness, compassion, humility, gentleness, and patience.
As the angry voice of my father still sounds in my ears long past his death, I try hard not to raise my own voice in anger, and have sought others who do not often raise their voices in anger. My mother, who died when I was 18, speaks to me as a mourning dove. While the words are not specific, the sound is gentle and reassuring. As doves are found in many places, may we listen for their peaceful sounds. Peace I leave with you.
My sister died on February 2, 2020. It is a palindrome date if written in numbers: 02022020--coming and going are the same. The cause was cancer and there had been enough time for very special friends to come from the state of Washington on the west coast to South Carolina to help settle affairs. They all shared a love of dogs and one of them had taken my sister's two beloved pets to Washington a few weeks before, to live out the rest of their lives. On the day she died, a little before 7 in the morning, I was alone with her in the hospital room. When the moment of passing was over, I called her friends, who were staying in a hotel around the corner from the hospital. The friend who had taken the dogs called her husband to tell him. He said, "Well, that explains it." A little before 4 in the morning, Paciific Time, the dogs had burst into a frenzy of barking, something they had never done before. They were inside the house, not out in the yard where they might have been reacting to a wild critter. Her friends and I agreed that her spirit must have gone to see them to say goodbye, before moving on to whatever comes next. My sister identified as a spiritualist. I think her message to me was: "Try to suspend your resistance and skepticism; try to remain open to future connections." I am trying, and poetry helps. I am so glad I will be able to meet you when you come to Camden in May, just up the road from here I live in Maine.
I recently wrote a poem about my grandmothers pain & suffering. It felt beautiful to attempt to hear her & to free her of her suffering, to ask that the pain that may have been passed down the female line be set free & returned peacefully to the divine (whatever one's own interpretation of this is). It felt like for a short time she resurrected & reunited with us when I read the poem at her old home. There is reference in the poem to the children she lost (4 in pregnancy, 2 at birth & a further 7 as adults). I hadn't thought of it like this before but giving them a voice too felt like a resurrection 🙏 I feel honoured to have been chosen to do this small but meaningful act for my ancestors.
I gave a talk this weekend about the power of growth and gardens spurred on by reflections on my father’s death. There were no particular words of his that I reflected upon, but as I spoke I couldn’t help but think of him as a seed that was planted so that the garden that has become my life could grow.
I am a wild gardener. I love watching the plants that I’ve put into the ground grow, but I also love watching the world that grows up between their stalks. I of course remove the larger plants that grow up in the soil near them to give my chosen plants room to grow. But I don’t begrudge the dandelions and other plants for wanting to be in that space, anymore than the clover that grows low, like a sweet green bed waiting to lain upon.
I am the gardener and I am also the garden. In a healthy garden, we plant the seeds, watch them sprout, and care for each plant as its stalk rises from the soil, and its roots join a world beyond our eyes. It is this world, beyond the veil, that the wild gardener knows exists, and can control to some degree, that is really healthy when there is a bit of wildness at play. The rhizomatic and mycelial world that connects this biosphere below the surface and in the air is where the beauty of existence, of connection, comes to life.
I weep damn near everyday for the pain and loss that accompanies the destruction of war, and the murder of innocents in Gaza, and I fear that some of the seeds being planted there are seeds of hatred that will become disastrous blooms. But I hope, god I hope, that the deaths of the littlest ones will lead the people to something greater, to a more beautiful and peaceful future, where the conquerors are are expelled from the garden to kneel in the dust, and the peaceful may lay down in green of becoming.
“The dead do have a message — stop killing. But who is listening?” Wow. Such powerful words.
Thank you for being vocal about standing with Palestine 🇵🇸
I have received good advice over the years, but none like the advice I got from my father many, many years ago when I first started working. I was a single parent in a very stressful, demanding job. I had life pulling me in every direction and it was taking a toll on my health: emotional, physical, and spiritual. My father told me to “set my priorities”, and everything will fall into place. And that is what I did. My daughter was number one. When work asked me to travel or work late I just explained my situation and said “no”, not at this time. Yes, I got passed up for promotions, etc…. , but that changed over the years. I loved my job, but my family more. I have used the “set my priorities” advice my whole life, and it has never failed me. My dad has been gone for 14 years, but I am connected to him in so many ways, this being just one example. I was so lucky to win the parent lottery.
Thank you. This was just what I needed to read today, as another mediocre Catholic. The voices of the dead are, I feel, imploring us to live and live fully.
Before my birth, my mother had unnamed still-born twins followed by Henry, who died a few weeks old.
Henry would have been my elder brother (if ...), instead of which I later became elder brother to William.
Like our grandfather, "Ganna" (I listen to Ganna telling me again, "DIN": do it now), Henry would have been a good man. He stands somewhere behind, above, alongside me and I listen to him as I plant and sow, weed and mow, and as I shoulder the business of the day. I carry Henry in my brow. Only when I die will he die, with me.
In the support groups I facilitated with bereaved parents, one of the challenging aspects of that grief was how to carry our child with us iinto the rest of our lives. What to do with the yearning? How to shelter the memories? Where to put the pain of their absence? Each parent came to their own way of how to imagine that. For me, Matt became again part of me . . . something like the lining of my soul. His presence is with me like my very breath and his voice echoes in my mind with the words he would say or the hopes he had for himself. The surprise of that is that now his presence never leaves me. When we must let go of the tangible, we are given a presence that never dies.
Thank you Padraig once again for your thoughtful and provocative reflections. A dear friend died from brain injuries suffered in a horrific cycle crash two weeks ago. He died at 73. He was sure he would make 100. And I always knew he would outlive me. The first voice I hear now is mine: "what the heck!". And yet another voice, is it mine or his, tells me each day I live with meaning and attention is a way that he can live on through me. A kind of resurrection if you will. And paying attention means to look unflinchingly at what is ahead of me, even my own death (which I hope is many years away but who knows!). My friend was a pasionate long-distance cyclist. His last big trip, last year, was from Azerbaijan to Istanbul. What I hear him say is that he keeps riding on somewhere! And that as I keep riding (metaphorically) he rides with me. Yes, his death sure threw me. Lots of emotional brusiing. But I hear him laugh and say: "back in the saddle, old boy, back in the saddle". And this writing reflection of mine here is my way of saying I am back, however tenderly, in the saddle. My saddle was never a bike saddle ( I hate cycling!) but writing is the saddle where I sit best. And where I sit looking forward today. Thank you Padraig for inspiring this along with so many others, holding fierce griefs of lost beloveds, moving on.
My friend and colleague Bill died a few years ago. Whenever he visited some place he would send me post cards with pithy words of advice. One arrived from New York City with a drawing of Ben Shahn on the front with these words, “Teach thy tongue to say “I do not know” and thou shalt progress.”
My relationship with my mother was …. complicated. She was unpredictable - sometimes the most compassionate of humans (and funny! Artistic! Intelligent!), but other times she wasn’t enough for her demons and they lashed out at us too (and our friends, spouses, grocery store clerks). Mental illness wasn’t discussed publicly at that time, so my brother and I were torn between the pain of thinking it was our fault, and the pain of disliking this woman we loved so dearly. But it’s also a story about the human species and hope… not “nature *vs* nurture”, but human nature *to* nurture… like the resilience of a plant that finds its way through a crack in the pavement. I find reading and writing poetry is like that crack - an open invitation to this truth.
*Inheritance*
Her hand was warm and fleshy,
And, despite her being dead,
everything was as it had been.
I must have asked her, then,
about The Regretful Things
Because, looking a bit confused,
she was saying, “yes, well, certainly,
I might have liked
to go on one more nice trip.”
That was it? No regrets!?
And I woke feeling a strange relief,
Like gratitude, that, yes,
I still had time to leave
my children nothing.
Another mediocre Catholic raising her hand! This: "I believe lives are like songs. They arise from silence and end in silence, but those who have heard them can sing them again."
At my yoga studio yesterday, a fellow student said I looked as though I was struggling with an important question and I was/I am. That question is, how do I define myself as a person of Faith who is not interested in Religion? I recently had an incredible experience after signing up for a series of talks hosted by Anamchara Books on Howard Thurman, the American author, philosopher, and advisor to Martin Luther King. I had no idea what I'd signed up for (I often wander through open doors) and I ended up in a small group of mostly retired pastors of different Christian faiths and old school style Berrigan Brothers activists from across the US. Wow! Welcoming, lovely, thoughtful. I've also signed up/with the US Mennonite community who are actively advocating and "singing" for peace in Gaza. All these young people out there joining the conversation on what it looks like to be a follower of Christ and placing action behind their Faith. And they sing wherever they go.
There is a video on YouTube of a group of Mennonites in the US Capitol building singing as they are arrested and removed from the Rotunda. Find it and watch it if you have time. It's Easter Sunday, the day of the resurrection. Are you singing?