Monday, January 10, 2011

Starting new. Or trying to.

Starting new. Or trying to. 
Happy New Year 2011 ;-)


I start with a fresh coat of snow, a blanket of white covering everything in sight.
This photo was taken at around 8:00 pm. No doubt, it is thicker now ;-)


I now turn these winking smile emoticons into something that I probably don't want to divulge, but will, since I am writing and sitting down to open this vein.


I continue with a poem that I think defines how I am feeling at the moment. Emphasis on every word of the poem, as it is the rawness of my sorrow.
My mom's father, my Papa, is very ill. It is unlike the other times when he has been in the hospital. He's cheated death so many times. 9 lives and going strong.
But this time is different, and I see it in him, in my mom, in my dad, in me.
Times are rough at the moment.


"People"


No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets. 


Nothing in them is not particular,
and planet is dissimilar from planet.


And if a man lived in obscurity
making his friends in that obscurity
obscurity is not uninteresting. 


To each his world is private
and in that world one excellent minute. 
And in that world one tragic minute
These are private. 


In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight
it goes with him. 


There are left books and bridges 
and painted canvas and machinery
Whose fate is to survive. 


But what has gone is also not nothing: 
by the rule of the game something has gone.


Not people die but worlds die in them. 
Whom we knew as faulty, the earth's creatures
Of whom, essentially, what did we know? 


Brother of a brother? Friend of friends?
Lover of lovers?


We who knew our father
in everything, in nothing. 


They perish. They cannot be brought back. 
The secret worlds are not regenerated. 


And every time again and again
I make my lament against destruction. 


-Yevgeny Yevtushenko 


Pre-Eulogy? Perhaps. Pre-Eulogy by many years? We'll see.
I'm really struck by the words: "In any man who dies there dies with him/his first snow and kiss and fight/it goes with him."
For my Papa, I'm sure this stands true, as it does with all men and women who withstand so many years. I wonder what he's thinking about. I wonder what memories don't matter at his point in life. I wonder how trivial many of our memories must really be.
I wonder how many I'll withstand.
I think about these things in the hour of my mortality.


Are we as immortal as we think we are?
God is laughing at me right now; I am sure.
One day we will recall the memory of me asking the question: "Are we as immortal as we think we are?", and God will laugh, and I will look at Him with an uneasy, fearful corner smile, realizing that it is not about me being immortal on Earth, no, it is about me being mortal on Earth and immortal with my dying breath. And I'll not know what to say.
And He, before I even get a chance to react, will know what my thoughts were going to tell me in our silly conversation, and I'll know that I am His before I even react to his laugh.
Maybe I'll never have to physically speak to him.
Yet, what is physicality in Heaven?


I pray that my Papa has this peace of mind, this wit, this levity, this "let go" in his breath...whenever that may be.
Hopefully later than sooner.
But, who am I to keep him mortal?
Who are we to keep any of us mortal?


In short, please keep us in your prayers. For I at least know that Papa will one day know of all the prayers he's received, and he will smile.
Much love-Jess

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