Are you ever hit by a memory that floods your senses completely?

All of a sudden I hear that song on the radio…the same song that was playing in the car that evening, years ago, as the sun began its descent in the western sky. I can feel the crisp, summer air that brushed past my face as my head and arm hung out the passenger side window of the old, red trooper. The smell of cut grass and green leaves that seemed to creep in the air vents without invitation, returns and I taste, once again, the half-frozen, cherry Slurpee that still stains my lips and freezes my brain in memories.

It’s magic.

It’s startling.

It brings me to tears.

What a blessing, what beauty, what a gift of reflection, to know and be able to remember those moments of joy and peace. Often they are not thought of with such reverence and appreciation at the time of their actual happening. It is with time and the passing of other events that these memories increase in personal value…perhaps the passing of time fogs our memory to the point that we reflect and see a moment we need to see, depending where we currently are in our life.

I’m sure these actual moments were not as joyous to me then as they are now; but regardless, if they are to serve a purpose in my life, perhaps they serve their greater purpose as memories and reflections, allowing me to learn from myself in retrospect and within the silence of my own mind.

I try to run backwards towards those places sometimes.

Sometimes, I want to relive instead of live.

I open my window to stretch my arms and catch the wind, to trap that same wind on my face forever. Instead, I let it run through my fingers, dance on my cheek, and return it to its place.

I am reminded, as the song on the radio changes, the temporality of all things.

"I Am" Poem--Assignment for Class

I am facing the sky.

I am Rocky Mountain sunrises, marveled at by young eyes through open tents.

I am desert sunsets, colors that arc over the landscape without end.

I am speaking to the wind, with every embracing breeze and reproachful gust.

I am facing the sky.

I am planted deep and wide, in soft grass that reach towards eternity.

I am perched on leafy branches of front yard trees.

I am, “Come on, Mom! Just 10 more minutes and I’ll come inside--I promise.”

I am broken, trivial promises, as I lose myself for hours when

I am facing the sky.

I am the product of my environment, a daughter of artists and craftsmen.

A work in progress,

I am rough-hewn by nature and refined in the fire of error.

I am ransomed by divinity and strengthened by the faith I receive while

I am facing the sky.

I am…unfathomed.

I used to see life in metaphors and allegories

Illusion, I see you everywhere, some times, some places. On the roof of that building, walking towards me, dressed in white. And I am in white too. It feels like real but sounds like Sarah McLachlan CD covers. You stood, hands in pockets, smiling up at me while I pushed and pulled the arms of the elliptical machine. You perch yourself on top of my black bookshelf and watch me at night. It’s really an unsafe place to perch.

You were wearing that backpack you always wore, strutting around Shaw/Howard with a benign look of calm and familiarity. Once, you were being pulled into the sky, purple and navy and speckled with silver lights. It was God who was pulling you too. I liked that illusion best. Sometimes I see you nowhere and I feel you never. Sometimes, sometimes the sting feels better than the nothing.

Dimensions, there are so many ways to see this now. The beginning of so many two’s; the beginning of my one. Untimely and tragic and hard and must be strong and in a better place now and quick and painless, they said. I used to see life in metaphors and allegories; hidden meaning in everything. You are the audience to which I write, whenever I write, when I speak unintentionally. You are the critic of my prose, my acts, my life.

recipE

If I could write the recipe of my healing, it would include a heavy dose of nature and all things beautiful and inspiring, absorbing into the earth’s scenery and surrounding myself with creations that evoke awe and belief in God and a higher order; finding that there are reasons, still, to survive. Faith. It would require equal parts sturdy footing on the grounds and reality of my life, and a heart brimming with hope as light as the air in the clouds. My thoughts and memories of him must braise until the essence of each is drawn out and their form is changed to reverence. Breathe. Admitting fears and deeply rooted anxieties, the recipe would call for a reinvention of my past self, for the past has been made, suddenly, obsolete. Patience. This recipe would require an unspoken honor of his life in the way I move forward in mine. It is right to visit the stream of remembrance, my cup to be dipped, and sit for a while. Release.

W.H. Auden Put it Best.

Hearing "Funeral Blues," by W.H. Auden, read for the first time several days ago in a writing workshop, brought me to tears (in front of the entire class, nonetheless) and lead me to produce the response I've included at the end.
With such simplicity and tragic beauty, Auden has conveyed the most complex and deep issue we, as mortal beings, are faced with: death. As someone dealing with a very recent and very sudden death, I know I have found it extremely difficult to explain the emotions and compulsions one experiences with bereavement. Auden, in true poetic brilliance, allows his readers a moment inside the mind and broken heart of someone dealing with such a loss. Whether or not you personally connect with the poem's theme, its prose will surely move you.

The Poem:

Funeral Blues
by W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

The Response it Evoked:

Free Writing Blues
by E.A.

Preparing for this...
There is no way to prepare for this.
There is no way to prepare yourself to face that pavement again; the base of the telephone pole where you laid the flowers down; the chain-link fence that separated the alley from the backyards and the faces of the curious residents, staring at me with expressions of simultaneous confusion and understanding; the building, the roof--the place where it all began and all ended.
There is no way to prepare for that.

You want everything to stop, the dog to stop barking, the people to stop laughing, the music to stop playing, and the whole world to simply quiet the FUCK down!

Because to you, everything has just stopped. Your heart may act as though it is still beating--vital signs appear to be normal--but it has stopped too. Everything, now, has stopped.
There is no speech, just muffled vibrations. Someone running down the street, cars almost hit me when I cross, but I don't realize that other things, LIFE, is still moving.

Love doesn't die when we do. I know that sounds cliche and optimistic, but it just doesn't.
If love was a hug, then yes, that has died.
If love was a kiss, yes, that died too.
If love was his hand holding mine and his voice saying my name, then yes, that too is deceased.
But it isn't.

Love is what it has to be, when it has to be it. Love transcends time, space, earth AND death.

I fell in love once. Once in, I never fell out of it--even when he fell. And now, even though he is gone, that love is still with me--it is REAL, MATERIAL, PALPABLE, EVER-PRESENT love!

Love, now, is being strong enough to go back, represent his life and his family, identify his belongings, and retrieve what is left.

Currently

I'm sitting at the kitchen table in my Harlem apartment, facing straight ahead, out the dirty window, listening to the squeals and screams of the struggling mouse, stuck to the sticky mouse-trapping-pad we placed underneath the oven. It has already captured one mouse so far, and I should be thinking: wow, how great! This sticky pad stuff really works! This contraption is catching all those evil, dirty, scheming, little mice that have been pooping on our counters and running around the apartment at night--gross! how dare they!--they must be annihilated!...right?

I'm sitting at the kitchen table in my Harlem apartment, facing straight ahead, out the dirty window, tears streaming down my face. Trying not to hear the squealing and screaming mouse, slowly dying on the poison-infused sticky pad behind me. Maybe if I continue to stare out this window I'll forget that it is there; maybe if I turn my music up a bit louder I won't hear the squeals, which I realize are now diminishing to faint yelps; as if he's calling to me! As if he knows that death is a soft spot for me now, and that even thinking about another creature losing the breath of life, makes me want to double over in sorrow. My tears are growing into a fit of crying.

I now hear only soft screams from the mouse; as if he is beginning to realize that this is a battle he will lose. As if he is taking these last moments to review his mouse-life: his mouse-children, his mouse-wife. Must I sit hear and endure this? If I change rooms, he will still be here, stuck to the sticky, mouse-trapping-pad. Any attempt to remove him from the sticky, mouse-trapping-pad would be futile...nor would I want to attempt an interference with death. My crying has turned to weeping.

Now all I hear is panting--tiny inhalations and tiny exhalations from his tiny, fragile lungs ..then silence. I turn off my music. I stop crying, and I turn around from the window.

Who I'm Writing For...

For those lost,
The tempest tossed.
For those without,
With prevailing doubt.

The disrupted and disjointed ones,
With little air left in their lungs,
We must breathe in and breathe again,
And carry the pace of the race we're all in.

Though flowers must always bloom and leaves wilt and fall,
And the seasons must always change like the seasons of us all,
The life of so precious a man, a man such as he
Was never, I submit, intended not to be.

I wonder if it's crowded there, beyond what I can see,
With other spirits attending their own and watching patiently.
I know you can read this, I hear you mocking my faults still,
In a lovingly nagging way, though, intending no harm or ill.

But I can think of nothing more to do to communicate my pain,
Than to immortalize you in my words so there you will remain.
You have followed me to school and stood next to me each day,
And I'm writing this for you, dear heart, to ease your loss some way.