even one year later
I struggle
to part with her things--
lipsticks and combs and intimates
a driver's license with her smiling face

It's been 13 months since my mom died and even though I've rented out the apartment downstairs to my newlywed daughter, my mother's room remains full of her things.  I tried to go through her closet last summer, and I actually did succeed in bagging up some clothes to donate to the Salvation Army, but that was as far as I got.  When it came to her drawer full of intimates, clothes she often wore and things like her lipstick and comb, I just felt stuck.  I don't know how other people do it.  Every time I think about throwing out these things, I tear up and tell myself I'm just not ready.  And maybe that's all it is--a case of being ready. 

I've gone into the room periodically over the last year with intentions of doing just a little, but I get stuck--stuck looking through things, stuck on memories, stuck with indecision and some times, stuck with talking to my mother, wherever she may be.

The problem is that the room has become more crowded by boxes of my parent's other belongings, from when I cleaned out the apartment--things I wasn't quite sure what to do with.  So now it's a matter of being overwhelmed.  But I think I'm ready--to at least begin. My plan is to go in once a week and accomplish one small thing, and if I get stuck on something, I leave it.

It's funny. No one has even offered to help me. Maybe they know it's just something I'm going to have to do myself. I sure have had to do a lot of things for myself in this world. Especially now that my mom is gone!  But I know I'll get it done eventually, because I'm strong and determined, just like my mom.

daffodils
in bloom again
last days
of my mother
up from my heart spring

It's that time of year, and here I am reliving all the painful days of last spring-my father's falls and trips to rehab, my mother's decline, the hair cut, the trip to the hospital and losing her so quickly as the earth warmed and the flowers bloomed.  I think it is good to remember, although a little painful. I don't want those days to ever be lost. I am grateful for the poems I wrote and the photos I took during that time. And of course, I am grateful I was there to help my mother leave this world.

Those fitful crazy out-of-my-control months spring from my heart as soon as all the signs of spring return,  I remember it was all I could do to keep up with the swiftness in which events unfolded, all the while, trying to hold onto the smallest moments along the way. The recovery has been long.  I am just beginning to feel like I've got my own feet beneath me again and that I can begin to make my days my own again.  Grief and healing is such a process.

I have begun work on a tanka book dedicated to both my parents. I have titled it "pink geraniums and whirligigs"--two things from my childhood that represent both my mother and my father for me.  I want it to have poems about them that I've written as well as poems that represent what they've instilled in me, perhaps also some old photos of them both. I want it to be a collection that honors my parents and where I come from.  I don't know if this has ever been done in tanka, but for me it seems natural and necessary.

how the stark cry
of one high-flying gull
in the winter sky
can return me to that safe-haven place
I roamed as a child

How I love my town in the winter!  It is such a place of refuge for me, a place to reflect and gain solace.  My day just isn't complete without a peaceful walk along the frozen beach, plowing headstrong into an icy north wind, or standing at the very place where the white-capped waves collapse onto the empty beach. 

This morning (26 degrees), on my way to the beach, I heard the crystal clear cry of a gull high above me and was amazed at how this one sound that goes back to my earliest memories, could meld all the years of my life together into one.  There was something very centering about it, something that touched the core of me, that made all the chaos of daily life just fall away. I felt safe and happy with simply existing.

I guess it is even deeper than that. Words, sometimes, are so limiting; I guess that is what I like so about tanka--the ability for so few words to carry nuances and ideas and emotions in between the lines that escape language!  There is a feeling, or a suggestion in the poem that can be understood, but not explained.

Amazing how a single moment-winter, walking in the cold on my way to the beach and the sound of a gull's cry-can transform a moment--a moment captured in 5 little lines.

papa's valentine

comes to me this day

of missing mama

beneath a winter gray sky

and cool swirls of snow

It is a constant ache-this quiet grief that gets carried along from day to day inside my heart, sometimes big and sometimes small, but always in the foreground, never letting me forget that life is forever different, forever changed without my mother.  Just a continuous feeling of grief and loss that can't be shared. 

So when my father (who turns 87 this Friday), who relies so much on me, who I am constantly caring for and giving to, said he had something for me yesterday when I was visiting, I all at once became a little girl again. In the midst of his bingo game he had me open this hand-made valentine with pink and red hearts glued all over the front, and written inside was "To my daughter, with all my love, Papa." I kissed him and thanked him, trying not to cry and he says "A little keepsake for you to remember me by."

For me, the valentine was all the love my parents wrapped me in from the day I was born-and finally I felt it again-what I had been missing since my mother's death- that wonderful love that can fill up my heart like nothing else.

It's almost as if my mother was sending her love through my father-at least that's how it felt to me.

a new year
a fresh snow
birds
beneath the feeder
counting their blessings

What a year it has been! Probably one of the busiest years of my life-filled with both great sadness and also great joy. The year began with the loss of David's good friend, Don, succumbed to cancer. February and March were consumed with my father and his two falls, in and out of hospitals and rehabs, all the while my mom's health failing, and then her unexpected death in April. Next came great transition-moving my father into an assisted living facility and going through my parents belongings. So busy caring for my father, visiting him every day, doing his laundry and meds, and still planning a bridal shower and an August wedding for my daughter. This was followed by the birth of my first grandson in October and then the wedding of my other daughter!

What I have learned is that these great joys after my mom's death were my greatest blessing--they helped me to grieve and to heal in ways I never expected or thought possible, but I also learned to wholly cherish these experiences of joy. I always thought of grief as tears and aching. But grief is wrapped within beautiful moments as well-through smiles, and wedding kisses and the sparkling sea and my father's tears as my daughter says her vows or he holds his great grandson. Moments of great joy shared by grief. Beautiful. Remarkable.

And so I begin 2010 afraid of nothing-knowing that whatever the year brings, there lives most wonderfully joy and grief, one inside the other.

Peace and Goodness.