From: prauda@dol-guldur.hut.fi (Kristiina Prauda)
Subject: Letter from a vacation...
Organization: Helsinki University, Finland
Date: 09 Nov 92 17:39:18 GMT


I was away for a long weekend, not really on a vacation, but first
house- and dog-sitting at my Dad's place, and then in my Grandma's
funeral. It was not a very pleasant weekend, though the funeral 
itself was not depressing at all, but full of light and hope (my
Grandma was very old, and longed for the rest she now got - also, 
it was a Greek Catholic service, full of the ancient beauty of the
estern tradition...). I myself was not on the best of moods, for
many reasons. 

On Thursday, I came up with this, and after some problems in the
mailing system, I now want to share it with all of you. 




DEATH IN THE FAMILY


Two days to my grandmother's funeral

as I sit here, a cat in my lap
on a cold grey day of November
- a day like the skin of granite: cold, rough, unyielding -
watching the dusk rise and creep upon us,
the cat, the dog, and me

in this house, my father's house
the house behind the unrelenting twilight of hundreds of miles,
behind the dark distant hills, 
woods of grey, fields of dirty snow like speckled granite

she never lived here, my Granma who died,
never in this house of the grey and cold whim,
so why do I feel it here? 
the unstoppable, slow creeping of death, 
the cold block of sorrow, the crushing emptiness 
of someone long gone

Mother

I know she lives, my Mother, happily even, I've been there,
in the little place of hers like a seashell 
that she has grown around her again, quite naturally,
I know she lives, breathes, reads the paper, goes to work,
smiles soothingly at her smallest pupil,
and yet, here she is dead

not gone, as it was, as my father wanted,
but dead, unmourned, and yet her absence filling everything
in this house, my father's house,
the house so seldom visited any more, 
the cat and the dog ghosts of little children long grown,
trusting love in their questioning eyes: 
Where is Mommy? When is she coming home?

What was it, Father? What died in you?
What stone-heavy thought of sorrow drove you
that you had to do this? to push love out
like a stone from your garden, after all these years

what died in you, died in us

I shiver, and I think of the one solace to my soul, 
my beloved, so far now on this stone-grey day of November,
and surrounded by death, I think about his death 
somewhere in the future, too far to fear yet, 
and how I do not know if I could live without him
and how I fear I could, after all

And I think how separate he seems from me now,
how the cold rises between us: my pain
like a huge distance of November country 
of grey snow and death
and how for all our love, 
the November country does not let him to me, 
does not let me feel his tenderness and how it warms me
does not let me home

I give but cannot receive: my joy died a slow, ill death
at a time too long ago to remember exactly

Two days to my grandmother's funeral

How did it all happen to this family? 
How did we become so crippled, so fragile and cold,
as the Novembers crept upon us, each in turn, 
separately, 
and spread these fields and woods of twilight between us
making us incapable of connecting, 
to each other or to others,
stealing these essential things from us, unnoticed:
love, family, strength, and whatever it was
that you lost, Father?

How did death get such claims on us all, 
us who should live and grieve for the dead

not for the living

Two days to my grandmother's funeral

as I sit here, and die more each moment,
falling towards the cold sleep like granite,
wishing that the miles were not so many and so dark, 
and that there would be a way yet, someday,
though not today,
in this house, my father's house

on this cold heavy day of November
as it turns and dims and dies 
all and none too soon


(Nov. 5, 1992)


...I think I wouldn't mind some hugs after this...


Kristiina
Official FireDancer of the RFA
prauda@dol-guldur.hut.fi

Newsgroups: alt.romance.chat