One Last Goodbye

No matter how many plans you make or how much in control you are, life is always winging it. (Carroll Bryant)

One more dead branch needs to be removed from our blue spruce; I haven’t faced the loss yet. The naked branch stays—with no hope of revival. The cost of maintaining the top branches is no longer worth it. The cost of removing the spruce is both high and final.

The tree was planted for our older son, Gregory, when he was a toddler. He’s in his forties now. He’s an accomplished writer. Greg’s newest book, The Dream Thief, is available for preorder. I have pictures of my son as a toddler as he watered the tree. It, too, was in early development.

The blue spruce once took over our front yard. Now, it has huge gaps between branches, like thought lapses. Warnings. The empty spaces will expand. And win.

Loss is never easy.

When a person dies loss plunges into deeper places. Several days ago, someone we have known for years, died. It feels unreal. I recall this woman on one hot day as she volunteered for kids with Down syndrome. Her face sweaty, her smile unaffected by the heat. Her gifts rooted in the hearts of so many people.

I think about this beautiful woman’s family. Friends. Grandchildren. And ask what happens next?

I consider the tree again, the one planted for my son, when my husband and I were proud of him for recognizing every letter of the alphabet before he was two. Now, his words touch minds and hearts. The tree won’t last much longer. My son and his talents affect many.

The woman who died suddenly, left a beautiful legacy and precious memories. May all who knew her embrace them.

Life is always winging it—with a lot of help.

For now, I celebrate hearing and giving kindness, laughter, the chance to offer an honest compliment. Peace, may it touch all, especially those who mourn.

May the green in today appear brighter, embraceable. For as long as possible.

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An Old Man’s Final Wish: a Poem

From discord, find Harmony. (Albert Einstein)

An Old Man’s Final Wish

Along a back window

at a huge family gathering

at a rented hall

the oldest uncle sat in his wheelchair

with the youngest child curled in his lap.

 

In the center

long tables covered with

gold, red, or blue

painted signs demanded isolation.

They claimed truth, whole

perfect, beyond criticism.

 

The families divided the space

into zones, while ugly words

stung the air—

How can you say that?

I can’t forgive you . . .

You are a fool.

 

While the family members argued,

the elderly gentleman and the tiny girl

met with approving eyes,

a twining of fingers, a gesture, a smile.

 

He celebrated the exquisite fit of

her name to her personality,

despite the hardened hearts

that fed her and his inabilities

to respond beyond a crooked grin

and speech delayed by multiple strokes

and advanced age.

 

She giggled, tugging gently

at the sagging folds in his face.

Then, as the toddler grew tired

and slept in his arms,

the man’s wife, gone twenty years,

appeared, clothed in soft light.

 

She called to him.

 

Before he allowed his spirit

to separate from his body,

he whispered his final wish

into the girl’s small ear.

 

The buffet opened as

the child’s mother noticed

her waking in the lap

of the dead man.

 

Unwilling to touch cold flesh,

several family members

abandoned their divisions,

at least for that moment,

and called to the girl,

 

Please, Hope, come to us.

 

They didn’t know they were

echoing the gentle man’s

deepest desire for his family.

 

poem previously published in For a Better World and in Piker Press

 

 

The Past Meets a Paper Shredder

 

Asking ourselves, “Where am I right now?” gives us a chance to step outside the internal dialogue for a moment of peace. Look around you, take a deep breath and notice what you see, hear and feel. Present moment awareness is the point of power and choice. It frees us from our compulsive thoughts. (Laura Harvey)

Okay. It’s time to organize. Or, should I have started these projects years ago? I haven’t been allowed to lift anything heavier than five pounds for more than a month. Now that my cataract surgeries are completed my eagerness to begin is heightened.

My eight-year-old grandson Dakota wants to help. He eyes the paper shredder. “Anything to shred?”

“No…Wait!” Folders lie stacked on top of one another. Copies of short stories already published. Stories I abandoned—for good reason. Early chapters of my books, The Curse Under the Freckles, Stinky Rotten Threats, and The Ugly Mood Storm. The Ugly Mood Storm, the third book in the series, will come out in October.

Sure. I could recycle the pages without shredding, but my young buddy likes the noise and the action. He knows how far away to keep his fingers from the blade, the source of the noise he enjoys.

The past returns as I open each folder. Mistakes circled in red on the page. Mistakes made in life jump out as well. Years cycle through as I open each worn folder.

“Oh,” I say.

“Something wrong?” he asks.

“No. It’s just a name of someone I used to know.” Someone who died.

He pauses to make sure I’m okay.

I celebrate the messy, beautiful present, my young grandson on the floor next to me.

Dakota continues to work, sorry when the shredder needs time to cool, sorry when the last sheet becomes a mass of white slivers. Then he is happy to play another game.

I take a deep breath and notice the whir of the air conditioning on one of the latter days of summer.

“See you next Thursday,” Dakota says.

His enthusiasm brings me a gift no amount of money can buy.

In the scheme of things where am I right now? Not sure I know, but it’s a mighty fine place.

 

 

Helped by One Small Butterfly and One Honest Hiker

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ontario. The Blue Water Motel. Simple accommodations with a personal touch. *The Bend Eatery, ample portions of pemeal and creative homemade fruit-covered waffles. A vacation without tourism. Cars in the parking lot with license plates from the United States are rare.

Pinery Provincial Park. A cool breeze, and time doesn’t demand each second be filled. Branches wind into patterns begging to be photographed or painted. I pay more attention to the scenery than I do to the zipper on my backpack.

A butterfly jumps rather than flies from one space on the path to another. As if leading the way. He flies from the trail after I take his picture. Is he sending a message? I don’t want my photo taken. Or, pay attention, lady.

“Which way does this path lead?” my husband and I ask two young women as we reach a fork in the trail.

“To a view of the lake.”

Yes! We need to go. A man with two small dogs meets us on the way. We tell him what we were told, then stop at a park bench to rest and enjoy the breeze, the sky, a lake blue enough to be good friends with the heavens. The path was uphill.

I don’t realize my backpack is unzipped until the gentleman returns. “Is this yours?” he asks.

My wallet! Inside are my driver’s license, money, and credit cards. I can barely speak. Thank you comes out as a sputter.

A Canadian angel with two small feisty dogs just saved my life.

We return to the Blue Water Motel. Route 21. A few more days vacation. Washed with gratitude. I pray my attitude remains, blossoming, growing, turning our remaining few days out of the States into awareness—on as many levels as possible.

Thanks to all who turned the word relaxation into a reality. Peace to all who need to find it. 

 

*link found only on Facebook, a new facility

Old, Like My Nope-Won’t-Do-It Vacuum Cleaner

It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone. (Andy Rooney)

My vacuum cleaner and I have more in common than I like to admit. Two of my toes are bound together after a mishap in my living room, and the electrical cord on my vacuum cleaner is held together with enough tape to stock a hardware store.

The vacuum and I both wheeze around too much dust.

“Come on!” I call to it. “One more time over the shag carpet.”

As an inanimate object, its answer is a weak whirring sigh.

If I were asked to follow my double-jointed youngest granddaughter’s exercise routine, my sigh would be similar.

Older citizens have limitations. Physically. Not when it comes to a capacity for giving and caring. We can live locked inside our pain or despite it. My grandson calls me a wrinkled kid because I get down on the floor and play with him. Perfection isn’t required. Not when imagination fills in the gaps.

Imagination, hope, love—gifts inanimate objects don’t have as they age. I pray to continue to learn, to celebrate possibilities hidden inside each new crease.

 

 

Sight or Vision: Reaching for Perspective

Experience teaches us only one thing at a time—and hardly that, in my case. (Mark Twain)

Wow! I see individual leaves on the trees. A male and female goldfinch at the birdfeeder. Sky, blue with white slivered memories of larger clouds. All seen through dark sunglasses. The world no longer appears wrapped in fuzz.

Not to my cataract-free eyes. My brain remains as scrambled as ever. How many places have my thoughts run as I drive a few miles along a familiar route? Past politics. Into man’s inhumanity to man. Through global warming. My stomach considers lunch and dinner preparations—I should have stopped for breakfast.

There’s a speed indicator on a pole. How long has that been here? I pass this way often enough to drive it blindfolded. Okay, almost. The number on my speedometer drops. Into a one-thing-at-a-time ordinary pace.

Ugliness remains. I look at it differently. I can be peace by joining others who live love. By not giving up. My cataract-free eyes have sight yet can continue to seek vision. Wisdom, it is earned. Never an automatic right.

 

If Only (A Poem)

If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

If peace were a bird, it would fly through heat or wind.

It would thrive in a nest open to storm.

 

If peace were a mountain,

it would stand patient,

constant, firm for centuries.

 

If peace were a tree, it would begin

as an acorn, unafraid of darkness,

then grow to house birds,

and reach for mountains.

 

Peace. It transcends

mountain borders,

and allows foreign bird species

to nest together.

 despite unseen possibilities.

 

originally published in For a Better World