The poetry of life and death

This blog is usually about poetry events and the where and when they are happening. But this time it is about the poetry of life and death as it is happening.

Tonight I am home, alone, sipping Pinot Noir, contemplating the seating arrangement in the car for the nine hour drive to my hometown. The main event for this trek? My mother’s funeral. Well, not funeral, not even service, but believe it or not, reception. Yeah, a reception. Is someone supposed to be receiving instead of losing, mmmm?

The last visit to good ole Urbana, Illinois was for the same reason, different parent. Same bat place, same bat station, three years later, Mom’s ashes will settle next to Dad’s.

A copy of Michael Moore’s “Sicko” sits on the floor next to me on top of a stack of my other videos that I just lugged into my new apartment. The last gift my mom gave to me. A memory of me walking in the kitchen while Mom was mixing cake or cookie batter and she was singing “I Shot the Sherriff,” just flashed into mind. That may not be funny to anyone who doesn’t know her. Um… didn’t know her.

Other memories deluge my mind, Mom scolding us for playing ball in the living room during the 1969 earthquake. Her shoving the kitchen table and chairs into the dining room before she mopped the floor. The delight in her eyes when she shared with new friends that the ceiling in the kitchen when we first moved into the house was painted Lizzie Borden Red. The look on people’s faces when she told them that she let us kids play up at 5 points (a major 5 street intersection in Urbana). It’s the same look I get from people when I advise them to pass their kids over a gas stove so they can get a good night’s sleep. I am my mother’s daughter.

I’ve spent years of my youth and middle age trying to be anything but that. Just as I come around to appreciate her and become proud of where I am from instead of ashamed, my brother put me on speaker phone so I could tell her goodbye. She was still hanging on, I was told. I didn’t know what to say, so I told her I love her and my kids love her and I didn’t want her to be in pain. I wanted her to know it was okay. When I read the obituary my brother wrote it said she died January 26 at 6:39 p.m. Central Standard time. I grabbed my phone and looked at my call record January 26, 8:26 p.m. Eastern Standard. There is only an hour difference between life and death. My timing was off.

I’ve been reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets for my Cannon and Critics class. Most are about how time is a nasty prankster and getting old a disgusting thing.  Yes, he was quite obsessed with Time’s cruel hand. He is dead. Everyone knows him or at least is aware of his overrated work.

I have this obsession too and don’t want beauty to fade or my body cracked and broken, I want immortality as much as anyone. Well anyone who has contemplated suicide as much as I have, two sides of the same coin.

My mom had this obsession too. Instead of writing she chose her immortality through painting. She was quite good and painted mostly of her beloved Arizona. She painted portraits of her children too. I’ve read that having children is also an expression of immortality. I’m not sure of this actually. I have children but never consciously thought of it as my way of sticking around forever. Whether that’s true or not though doesn’t matter. As long as I’m alive I’ll express my memories of both Mom and Dad and my grandparents through writing and telling my children and if they have children, I hope they will tell them. Who knows how long those memories will in fact last. I won’t be around to know but the poetry of life and death will always be. Someone will be writing it and reading it and living it.

For Mom:

Cutting Screens

Mom sat at her desk carefully

pressing the exacto blade in profilm,

using that metal ruler as a guide

to cut designs with precision.

Getting paid under the table

assures her that us kids

will have dinner tonight.

I tell her that the picture she is

working on, guys holding beer cans at

their crotches and pouring the liquid

on the ground, while pretty women stand around,

is a play on the boys letting girls

watch them pee. Mom tells her boss

she can’t cut this screen – it is wrong.

She won’t get paid for that one, but she

takes the cash for those she finished and

slips it neatly into her purse.