I’ve written about my mother often, for all the right reasons (I love her, I cherish her memory, she’s a vital part of my ongoing existence, etc.), and I find myself obliged to return, not infrequently, to the subject of her untimely death (which begs the question: when is a death not untimely? Aren’t all of us fighting a battle against a clock we can’t control? Perhaps we can agree that any death is unwelcome, except when it isn’t, and that’s usually when illness is involved, and then things get profoundly complicated).
My mother was the subject of the memoir Please Talk about Me When I’m Gone, which I was honored to receive the Memoir Magazine Prize for Books for in 2022. In addition to writing about my favorite person, and the lingering influence she exerts over my life, I also hoped to share some of my family’s experience in the hopes that it might inform and inspire others. Suffice it to say, the way we deal, as individuals and as a society, with terminal illness leaves much to be desired, and the first remedy is open and honest communication, however unwelcome.
This cycle of poems deals with “mommy issues” in, hopefully, all the right ways and for all the right reasons! The first of this three-poem cycle is below. Huge gratitude, once again, to The Good Men Project for publishing more of my work, and a big shout out to the fathers everywhere who kept it real for the kids. (Link to these two and all the previous poems here.)
Impermanence
During the last days of my mother’s life I escaped
every afternoon: to live, to be near things and feel
the air; to be touched by all the diligent tensions
striving to ensure all things that die feed new life—
a rhythm of reactions able to befuddle the faithful
and inspire skeptics (or vice versa), all of it inexplicable
unless we see something of ourselves inside everything
we can’t unconditionally know, finding some purpose
between our resolve and resignation: a realized peace.
I went to the lake—a respite from those uncomfortable
thoughts and inexorable family rituals, the only place
I was ever alone those final days when we stood sentinel,
guarding the woman we loved after she could no longer
speak for or protect herself; where, as a summer sun set,
the impassive sky stared down and saw its ancient face
reflected up, while illimitable stars began to faintly glow,
the day’s light not dying so much as surrendering itself—
this unceasing cycle less conclusion than a continuation.
