My father-in-law's funeral is today. His name was Charles. He had been ill with cancer for some time and outlived his doctor's prognosis by more than two years. The final two weeks were hard. He died a hard death.
When he was still feeling reasonably well, he told Allen that after he was gone he wanted us to have a glass of wine together. He wanted us to make a toast to him, saying, "To Old Chucky, wherever he is."
He last words to me were that he was ready to go. He also said he wanted Allen and me to enjoy our trip out west this summer.
Those statements were helpful and erased any guilt about going on the trip. The trip out west is something we have dreamed about for a long time. I was thinking the experience might add to the novel I've been working on. I was hoping to work on the novel "on the road."
It is hard on a man, losing his father. Allen said that taking care of his father during the last days was a spiritual experience. He said he wouldn't take a million dollars for the experience. He also said no one could pay him a million dollars to do it again.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Pages
Dreaming
About Me
- Theresa Williams
- Northwest Ohio, United States
- "I was no better than dust, yet you cannot replace me. . . Take the soft dust in your hand--does it stir: does it sing? Has it lips and a heart? Does it open its eyes to the sun? Does it run, does it dream, does it burn with a secret, or tremble In terror of death? Or ache with tremendous decisions?. . ." --Conrad Aiken
Followers
Facebook Badge
Search This Blog
Favorite Lines
My Website
Epistle, by Archibald MacLeish
Visit my Channel at YouTube
Great Artists
www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from theresarrt7. Make your own badge here.
Fave Painting: Eden
Fave Painting: The Three Ages of Man and Death
by Albrecht Dürer
From the First Chapter
The Secret of Hurricanes : That article in the Waterville Scout said it was Shake- spearean, all that fatalism that guides the Kennedys' lives. The likelihood of untimely death. Recently, another one died in his prime, John-John in an airplane. Not long before that, Bobby's boy. While playing football at high speeds on snow skis. Those Kennedys take some crazy chances. I prefer my own easy ways. Which isn't to say my life hasn't been Shake-spearean. By the time I was sixteen, my life was like the darkened stage at the end of Hamlet or Macbeth. All littered with corpses and treachery.
My Original Artwork: Triptych
Wishing
Little Deer
Transformation
Looking Forward, Looking Back
CURRENT MOON
Labels
- adolescence (1)
- Airstream (7)
- Alain de Botton (1)
- all nighters (2)
- Allen (1)
- altars (1)
- Angelus Silesius (2)
- animals (1)
- Annie Dillard (1)
- Antonio Machado (2)
- AOL Redux (1)
- April Fool (1)
- Archibald MacLeish (1)
- arts and crafts (55)
- Auden (1)
- awards (2)
- AWP (2)
- Bach (1)
- Basho (5)
- Beauty and the Beast (1)
- birthdays (1)
- blogs (5)
- boats (2)
- body (2)
- books (7)
- bookstores (1)
- Buddha (1)
- Buddha's Little Instruction Book (2)
- butterfly (4)
- buzzard (2)
- Capote (4)
- Carmel (1)
- Carson McCullers (1)
- cats (15)
- Charles Bukowski (1)
- Charles Simic (2)
- Christina Georgina Rossetti (1)
- church (2)
- confession (1)
- Conrad Aiken (1)
- cooking (5)
- crows (1)
- current events (2)
- D. H. Lawrence (3)
- death (6)
- Delmore Schwartz (4)
- detachment (1)
- dogs (7)
- domestic (3)
- dreams (21)
- Edward Munch (4)
- Edward Thomas (1)
- Eliot (3)
- Eliot's Waste Land (2)
- Emerson (2)
- Emily Dickinson (10)
- ephemera (1)
- Esalen (6)
- essay (3)
- Eugene O'Neill (3)
- Ezra Pound (1)
- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1)
- fairy tales (7)
- Fall (16)
- Famous Quotes (16)
- festivals (2)
- fire (5)
- Floreta (1)
- food (1)
- found notes etc. (1)
- found poem (2)
- fragments (86)
- Frida Kahlo (1)
- frogs-toads (4)
- Georg Trakl (1)
- gifts (1)
- Global Warming (1)
- Gluck (1)
- goats (1)
- Goodwill (1)
- Great lines of poetry (2)
- Haibun (15)
- haibun moleskine journal 2010 (2)
- Haiku (390)
- Hamlet (1)
- Hart Crane (4)
- Hayden Carruth (1)
- Henry Miller (1)
- holiday (12)
- Hyman Sobiloff (1)
- Icarus (1)
- ikkyu (5)
- Imagination (7)
- Ingmar Bergman (1)
- insect (2)
- inspiration (1)
- Issa (5)
- iTunes (1)
- Jack Kerouac (1)
- James Agee (2)
- James Dickey (5)
- James Wright (6)
- John Berryman (3)
- Joseph Campbell Meditation (2)
- journaling (1)
- Jung (1)
- Juniper Tree (1)
- Kafka (1)
- Lao Tzu (1)
- letters (1)
- light (1)
- Lorca (1)
- Lorine Niedecker (2)
- love (3)
- Lucille Clifton (1)
- Marco Polo Quarterly (1)
- Marianne Moore (1)
- Modern Poetry (14)
- moon (6)
- movies (20)
- Muriel Stuart (1)
- muse (3)
- music (8)
- Mystic (1)
- mythology (6)
- nature (3)
- New Yorker (2)
- Nietzsche (1)
- Northfork (2)
- November 12 (1)
- October (6)
- original artwork (21)
- original poem (53)
- Our Dog Buddha (6)
- Our Dog Sweet Pea (7)
- Our Yard (6)
- PAD 2009 (29)
- pad 2010 (30)
- Persephone (1)
- personal story (1)
- philosophy (1)
- Phoku (2)
- photographs (15)
- Picasso (2)
- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1)
- Pillow Book (5)
- Pinsky (2)
- plays (1)
- poem (11)
- poet-seeker (9)
- poet-seer (6)
- poetry (55)
- politics (1)
- poppies (2)
- presentations (1)
- Provincetown (51)
- Publications (new and forthcoming) (13)
- rain (4)
- Randall Jarrell (1)
- reading (6)
- recipes (1)
- Reciprocity (1)
- Richard Brautigan (3)
- Richard Wilbur (2)
- Rilke (5)
- river (5)
- river novel (1)
- rivers (12)
- Robert Frost (2)
- Robert Rauschenberg (1)
- Robert Sean Leonard (1)
- Robinson Jeffers (1)
- Rollo May (2)
- Rumi (1)
- Ryokan (1)
- Sexton (1)
- short stories (13)
- skeletons (2)
- sleet (1)
- snake (1)
- Snow (24)
- solitude (1)
- spider (2)
- spring (1)
- Stanley Kunitz (1)
- students (2)
- suffering (4)
- suicide (2)
- summer (20)
- Sylvia Plath (2)
- Talking Writing (1)
- Tao (3)
- teaching (32)
- television (4)
- the artist (2)
- The Bridge (3)
- The Letter Project (4)
- The Shining (1)
- Thelma and Louise (1)
- Theodore Roethke (16)
- Thomas Gospel (1)
- Thomas Hardy (1)
- toys (3)
- Transcendentalism (1)
- Trickster (2)
- Trudell (1)
- Ursula LeGuin (1)
- vacation (10)
- Vermont (6)
- Virginia Woolf (1)
- Vonnegut (2)
- Wallace Stevens (1)
- Walt Whitman (8)
- weather (7)
- website (3)
- what I'm reading (2)
- William Blake (2)
- William Butler Yeats (5)
- wind (3)
- wine (2)
- winter (24)
- wood (3)
- Writing (111)
- Zen (1)
6 comments:
Place me like a seal over your heart,
like a seal on your arm;
for love is as strong as death,
its jealousy unyielding as the grave.
It burns like blazing fire,
like a mighty flame.
Many waters cannot quench love;
rivers cannot wash it away.
Song of Solomon 8:6-7
In deepest sympathy,
Gretchen
I'm so sorry about Allen's dad.
I am sorry to hear about Allen's dad also, and can understand how caring in this way is a spiritual experience. Please accept my condolences. I share in your sorrow.
To Old Chucky, wherever he is.
I am so sorry to hear of your loss. My sympathies to you, Allen, and your family. It is a good thing that Allen got to spend that time with him, I'm sure. Blessings to you all.
My father died in his sleep at home with my Mom, from old age and complications from getting old. We had been in the hospital days before. I spent one of those nights there, at his side (the staff seems to take better care if there is a realative 24/7) and in the middle of the night, while changing my Dad's bed cloths ( a cathather (sp?) was out of the question and we volunteered to help the staff) he looked up at me with his startling blue eyes and said "My daughter Mary!". It still beings tears to my eyes. He died two days later. Your husband is right....My heart goes out for him and you. It is difficult loosing a parent, no matter how prepared you think you are.
Theresa,
I'm so sorry for yours and Allen's loss. My thoughts are with you.
Judi
Post a Comment