MEMENTO MORI

Ben Bulben

The last 3 lines of W. B. Yeats' poem. I sat there one time under the shadow of Ben Bulben and read the entire poem. And looked up finally and saw that of all people, the Clancy Brothers were there too, to pay their respects. Gobsmacked doesn't cover it.

Under bare Ben Bulben's head

In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid,   

An ancestor was rector there

Long years ago; a church stands near,

By the road an ancient Cross.

No marble, no conventional phrase,   

On limestone quarried near the spot   

By his command these words are cut:

               Cast a cold eye   

               On life, on death.   

               Horseman, pass by!

Simple and powerful.

I am struck recently by the number of my blog readers who have died. Leaving memento mori on their blogs, some blogs have vanished. I have some last cards
sent by a few in the mail. With their photos. The Big C has taken most of them.

I can't even count the real life friends who have died. Another twenty five? Two of whom are also seriously ill right now.

All this to say, it accounts for extreme loneliness at times, wishing for that physical shoulder to lean on, the understanding, the depth of compassion and caring that comes from really old friends, the ones who climbed trees with you or cribbed your homework.

I am going through a very rough patch at the moment. Someone I love deeply is going through a sudden and rapid life changing ordeal. And the world is being turned on its axle.

I have tried sharing my depth of sadness out here but have been abandoned, one time physically in mid sentence, a couple of times (I haven't shared it hardly at all) by those on text who are my closer newer friends who live nearby but these have never followed up with questions about how am I doing, and get on with their own demands on my time as if this terrible thing isn't happening.

And speaking of time, I am so very grateful I am busy and involved with three different projects, I light a candle and play some gentle music and sing some of the old songs I would sing on stage back in the day. Self-soothing.

I am very grateful for a blog friend who stays in touch every day as we lurch along together with many challenges but have the honesty to spill it out and commiserate. 

But yes, loneliness stalks me like never before while still grateful I am on this side of the daisies as I view an afterlife as twaddle.

But I think we only hit this point of life when we survive and outlive our dearies and look around us when hurting and go whoa, Nelly, where are they all gone?

My dad. a widower forever, described it to me one time but I didn't listen, there must have  been pain in his voice but I didn't notice. I blithely said "Da, why don't you make some new friends?"

Karma. Ta, Da.

Before I hit the post button, I dove into other memento mori posts I have written over the years and was astonished at how many there were. All the old lovers are dead now, the last one in September. 

Memento Mori

 

Memento Mori

What does one say?

The card lies flat on the table.  The pen poised above it.

Reflection.

A late in life marriage for him, when he retired, having spent many years travelling for an international company, she was twenty years younger. They were married eight years. He died yesterday, aged seventy. A long slow process of cancer, eating his blood, then a lung, his facial skin. This cancer ran in the family. It had a complicated name.

He had a life most of us can't even imagine. His father died suddenly at forty leaving five children and a mother with a nervous breakdown (Oh, this happened a lot. I know. I've seen it.) All the children put into care. Mount Cashel Orphanage  for the boys, Littledale for the girls. Horror stories abound about these places where children were so casually abused. I wrote about a Newfoundland orphanage victim here.

Glen (pseudonym) always maintained that he was treated like a prince in Mount Cashel. And insisted, almost violently at times, that he had never even seen abuse. One of his sisters suicided. Another has an extreme case of obsessive compulsive disorder - a frantically hygienic woman, twenty four hours a day. Exhausting to watch her. Another sister is alienated from the family and his brother, an artist,  reinvented the past so as to delete Mount Cashel completely.

Patricia, his wife, has her own issues revolving around food and semi-starvation. She is terrified of a complete meal and only likes tiny portions on those wee plates you'd see at afternoon tea at a grandmother's. She has no friends and tolerated Glen's. Barely.

I think about all these things as I stare at the card on the table and ponder on what to write. Words come easy to me. Normally. I find it easier to write all this down here than to write a few words on the card. I'm not one to ever trivialize a card with cliches. Never have. Never will. And I'll face the funeral home tonight. A card is de rigeur, especially for one who will not be buying a mass for the deceased parish committee president.

I lit a candle for him over the last few days and reflected on the parts of his life that he had shared with me. He loved poetry. He was an amateur astronomer and if he could have afforded it, would have played golf every day at dawn.

A horrible time for him was when his new wife had found an old diary of his and read it. And didn't speak to him or look at him for a week after. He told me he was so terrified he felt like a little child again. He burned all his diaries after that.

We were alone in his SUV when he told me this, driving for a good hour over the barrens. I let the silence float around us in the vehicle. Waiting.

But he never told me what was in that diary that was worth a week of freezeout.

Memento Mori

It's the day after. Headlines were full of it yesterday. I was at a dinner dance where we stood for a minute of silence to honour the Dead of the Towers.

And I can't help myself. I think of the subsequent murderous revenge that massacred the Innocent of Iraq. The men, women and children who were slaughtered. With so little regard for the genocide that the countries who invaded Iraq without cause did not bother to count the bodies piling up. So concerned agencies did. Some say the death toll breached over a million. With the luckier fleeing to other countries. Countless orphans victimized by pimps and paedophiles. The treasure of their country looted, their landscape devastated.

"Mission Accomplished."

"Collateral Damage."

"Shit Happens".

The contempt behind those words hits me square in the heart.

I grieve the loss of lives and country.

I grieve that the tragedy of 9/11 was perverted into an abomination.

Memento Mori

I thought I had destroyed all mementos of the relationship. Truly. I did that with most of my romantic history. A few photos remain, maybe. But all letters and emails and tokens of a once seemingly profound and everlastin' love were tossed, burned or otherwise disposed of.

I don't know whether I regret this or not. I believe there is something oddly pathetic about clutching dried roses and love-cards to one's bosom in old age. As if that was all that mattered about one's life when there is so much more. Often in solitude but also involving deep and abiding friendships.

Anyway, this fell out of a box of photos, don't know why it survived because the other 27 were destroyed I think, but I'll tell you the story behind it. I was away for a month in Ireland. But before I left, my lover handed me a package of sealed notes, one for every day of the month I would be away.

It was 1997. And yes, he was my last great love.

Well, its Tuesday
I wonder where you'll be
I wish I was there with you seeing you do your party pieces, hearing you sing, enjoying the vitality, the fun, the warmth, the excitement.
I'll be missing you terribly.
But I know you'll soon be coming back and I have all the wonderful memories
of moments shared
magical feelings
incredible passion
but above all the joy and peace of mutual love.
H.

Memento Mori

He was a tough, stocky fellow with a loud grating voice. I sure didn't enjoy his behaviour at our weekly village card game. He banged the table a lot. He was a school bus driver and had a rough cut to him. Apart from his beard. Which was immaculately trimmed. A big red face. If I'd been a kid on his bus I'd have been terrified of him. He basically ignored me even when we shared the same table. And then a couple of months ago I found out from someone else he had cancer. Real bad.

So next time he was at my table at cards I hesitated and then said to him I was sorry to hear of his troubles. And meant it.

"Oh," he said in his big roary voice, surprised like, "I'm just about getting used to it. I had a treatment in Halifax last week and they said I was riddled with it."

I scrambled for something to say. What in gawd's name does one say?

"I can't imagine what you're going through...if there's anything..."

"Why!" he shouts, "That's very kind of you. See, I'm trying to spend as much time with the four young grandchildren. And the wife. She's sick too....."

Yesterday he died. We had two minutes of silence at the card game.

And then, simultaneously, everyone in the room banged their tables.

Purge

I never tire of the sunsets here

I've started the purge. Not that there's much enough. Sentimental stuff hauled all the way here from Toronto. Letters, photos, cards. And the journals I need to burn. Tripe as my father would have called such "rubbish". He burned and dumped all his own stuff about 6 months before he died. "The Evidence" as I like to mentally call it. Cartons of papers and gawd knows what else.

I found lovely photos of my Helen. Cards from Missing Daughter loving me forever. Forever is always negotiable, isn't it. At the time we mean it. Can never imagine forever being over and done with. I philosophize as I work my way through stuff. A lot of thank you cards extolling my kindness, etc. Many from people whose names do not stir any remembrance at all. Weird that. Many items from people long dead. I am being ruthless. I don't need these memento mori anymore in my life. We change. We evolve. We devolve. We move on.

I had to make two hard decisions in the week. One was not to attend Grandgirl's Convocation in Ontario. She was limited to inviting three people only. Her father, her mother and I were her choices. The health thing. I am bockety, unsteady on the pins. I thought about this. Being a constant worry to my loved ones. Because worry they would. And distract. There is endless walking and grounds and halls and parking lots. I'm good for about three minutes and then kazoom. And a fresh worry, legitimate, deep vein thrombosis on the flight. I shouldn't say worry as I sound a mite obsessed. I'm not. At all. This was a carefully thought through decision with no regrets. I'll see the pictures and the fact she included me in her three beloveds meant the world to me.

I'm putting a small stayover bag for my apartment together. I'm quite excited about this. And then I walk across to my iceberg in this sparkling shine of a day and I feel the tears. Leaving here, leaving this magical place where I finally found myself. I still have a busy final tourist season happening ahead of me.

That's all good. I'm going out with a bang.

I keep reminding myself: This is all so good. So very good.