Sadness has a way of sneaking up on me and knocking my feet out from under me. Today I'm having trouble moving into the day. I sit with my coffee on the deck and think, "this is not the way my life was supposed to go." I was supposed to be working less, not more. Sharing dreams and work with someone, not trying to make it alone..again. It wasn't supposed to go this way, not that thinking like that really does me any good. But I indulge myself for awhile, feeling very very sorry for myself and crying, thinking if I sink into it deeply enough it will pass.
In reality I don't think the sadness snuck up so quietly. It started in church seeing two friends lean into each other and then reach to hold hands, finally filing with Social Security, talking to someone about renting out the shop space, and worrying over the garden and the weeds and the potatoes looking sickly. Little things just pile up until I find it hard to remember to breathe. I have to tell myself to breathe in and out, in and out. I don't want to do anything, can I simply just stop? Not really, but it's a tempting proposition.
When friends find me overwhelmed with things, especially the garden; they usually tell me to let it go. And I usually answer with something along the lines of, "I simply can't let it all go to hell, it will be too hard to bring it back later." This morning I realized it is more than that. It was ours. It is a piece of us, of him, that I simply cannot let go of yet. I need it to be there. I don't know why, I don't even know if it's reasonable, but if there is one thing I am learning it is that reasonable doesn't really matter. It simply is what it is, it will change, I will change, but it all takes some kind of mysterious "it's own time." I sometimes feel as if I am simply along for the ride. Kind of like rafting, there is only so much you can do to master the river, at some point you are simply a part of the river, responding as best you can.
So today I am sad. I will walk the dog, go to work, and do the best I can. Breathe in, Breathe out.
That Evening
ReplyDeleteKen Hada
that evening
after the service
after the casket
was lowered into red dirt
dirt which he had plowed
and planted
I sat with her
in the house
a house that would never be
the same, the house of grandkids
and trophies from prize quilts
and blue-ribbon jams from
county fairs
and she spoke some
and I spoke some
I was not yet eighteen
He was sixty five
so my thoughts
too few memories
the shotgun he bought for me
at auction, catching a big bass
on his cane pole, sitting on his lap
at sunrise, hearing growls about
harvest and calves, hay, tractors
and fences
now it would all change
we both knew that
as we sat holding our differing
grief, it would all change
some for the better
but not all
sundown and death – too obvious
to construct – that first night
was hard, but she was hard too
and she teaches me
to live on
for thirty more years (and counting)
that evening still alive in me –
a lesson in grief
believe it, bear it
bury it
from Spare Parts. © Mongrel Empire Press, 2010.
oh kathleen, where do you find these perfect poems?
ReplyDelete