Milestones. Another Invite. Celebrate!

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(Edited)

Milestones.
Invites in the mail.
Celebrate!

"Save the date" -
Casey and Jake
cordially invite you to celebrate
their big day;
next will come
more rich cardstock,
pristine and pretty,
"Welcome to the world" our new baby girl,
and after that,
a few years that fly like the wink of an eye,
a boy to complete the unit:
Mom and Dad, son and daughter.

Another invite in the mail!
White and bright,
glittering with good news.
Another mother's paid her dues:
Her baby grew as babies do,
As all babies should.
Another wedding! Life is good.
She paid her dues.
I did too!

While others flourish, one will inexplicably flower and fade.
We don't get to ask why.
We cooked and cleaned, we fed and bathed,
we loved and nurtured and played.
If the train went off the track,
Would you want your money back?

I want my son back.

Do they see no invites come from me?
Every day is a good day
So long as we are here,
breathing the same air,
sipping each afternoon tea
as it were our last.

The last sip of tea
The last breath
The last word, a whisper,
"Mom"

"Celebration of Life," they call it now,
but I don't know how
to rejoice that he is gone,
that this boy of mine
never married,
never made a granny of me,
never lived to weather the storms
that give us our gray hair and wise airs.

Another invite in the mail.
Another baby is all grown up now.
My only job, to share the joy.
Sending love, and my regrets,
I'm just not ready yet....

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NOTE: I was trying to write a poem for one of my favorite poets, but I will never capture and distill words like she does. Sorry for that, but sorry, sorry, sorry for the recent loss I'm not able to express.

This is for @owasco. For now, that is all I shall say.



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21 comments
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I love you so very much, Carol. You done real good with this one. I am sobbing over here.

Do they see no invites come from me?

This line really got to me. We see the joy of others, always with tinges of both envy and hope. Some do see no invites; those are the fastest friends. Will an invite to a memorial satisfy? No, indeed it will not, which is why I cannot face that task. Herculean. Not happening, at least not now.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

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Ohhh, you read this, after all - I didn't think you'd be up for that.
I cannot do poems, but I can come up with one or two lines now and then that resonate.
You're the poet, and ever more shall be - and I wish I were there, in person, helping you through the Herculean tasks ahead.
Thank you for taking time to read and respond, especially now. {{Hugs!}}}

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That is a wonderful poem!!!!

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Wonderful? You are too generous. :)
The invites we don't get to send: somehow, that came through to you, but to most readers, would it? To have a child who doesn't thrive, doesn't celebrate the milestones so familiar to us: the weddings, births, baptisms, the occasions that warrant lovely card stock and postage stamps, inviting others to share the joy. YOU would be able to convey that in a few succinct words, even if it took three days to hammer them out.

Today someone wondered if anyone ever notices she, too, is suffering. She's a pastor, consoling others, but she's losing family members to cancer and strokes, and I keep coming back to this: "I am not typically on the 'needy' end of community... and yet I find myself needing... and feeling like no one notices my deep pain."

I notice (not always, of course) - I feel for others - but how to convey it? How to let someone know You are noticed, seen, loved - I guess, what else, but a CARD IN THE MAIL, right? Maybe that was the ironic final line my poem needed.

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The pastor might always be at work when another human is nearby. She needs some friends - friends notice, because friends you let see.

Your poem is really really excellent. Succinct (yes, even you can do that), simple and pure. The use of the invitation as a foundation is brilliant, and very effective. I think anyone who finishes the poem will see the invitation's purpose in the piece. For me, the missing invitation (to a marking of a passage), is left in the ether, but very much there, just like the lost life. No final line is needed. Let those who really understand the poem feel the unsent invitation, or the invitation in the mail, whichever they would want to do. I really love this thing, it's perfect.

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That is high praise indeed! Thank you Stacey! All I really wanted these words to do was let you know how very much you're on my mind and in my heart. You've cheered ME up. You are a marvelous poet and short-story writer, and you've inspired me and made my day more than I can measure. Thanks again. :)

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I found a website full of poems for mothers and sons. This:

People say time is a big healer, but you never get over it; you just learn to cope. Over the years things like a song on the radio, or someone who looks similar to him or the fact that you see his friends growing and getting married and having children, that to me is the hardest to cope with. We miss him every single day and we will for the rest of our lives.

Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/for-the-need-of-you

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OK so your poem is hands down much much better than any of those. I read at least six of them. Yours is more insightful and incisive, cuts its message into the reader's heart, instead of merely talking about a cut heart. Yours is original, those are all the same.

But the provided quote, yes. I had those feelings while he was still living though, because he did not thrive physically for the last, oh, twelve years or so. His/my loss is different. I'll miss him. Today is my first day alone, without any of the women who supported me through his passing and beyond, and I am going through those motions one after the other.

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I'm thinking of you all the more today Stacey, alone with the cats and dear Hazel the dog, gong through the motions of the living because you are still living! You are alive! You are so very alive and vibrant and gifted with talents beyond counting. You are kind and good. The world needs more people like you. Sometimes I think the main reason we don't get to "know" there's life after death (a good afterlife, at that) is because so many of us would just quit this life NOW to go join our lost loved ones. Why go on, if there's a better place, and we could go there now? I'm confident you'll hang in there Stacey - you are still needed here on earth, which is what I keep telling my mom, who's almost 85 now, and has buried three daughters, and I must remind her that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren NEED her, here and now, and she doesn't get to cash it all in just yet... maybe I need to find a better approach. (I know, I know.) She is a font of wisdom and a model of endurance. The mold is broken; resilient, enduring women like her seem to belong to the last century, not this one. She makes me look like a snowflake. So when she sighs and says why bother to fix the furnace when I may not live to see another winter, you know it's time to remind her of all that is good in this world and make her feel loved, needed, and valued. As your daughters and so many others must remind you that YOU are....

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Thank goodness for supportive, strong women. They are keeping me going. You are as strong as your mother, having endured all those traumas too! This is something I tend to forget - all of Niko's traumas were mine as well. We learn patience and develop deep deep love through these events. All those lovely things you said about me are true about you.

Last night was my first night alone. I realized that I have never lived alone before in my 67 years!!! I could not sleep at all. Got me a massage scheduled for later this morning. Played backgammon with a friend yesterday evening. Going through the motions, when I am not doubled over with grief.

Your mother must fix the furnace. Winter will be here very soon.

xo

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Living alone - no other human companions, that is, no more family members - so many of us have done this. Widows, divorcees, empty nesters.

You have the start of a poem or a novel (or a freewrite prompt) here: Your mother must fix the furnace. Winter will be here very soon.

When I commend my sister Kelly's daughters for being so strong thoughout her brutal battle with cancer and her cruel demise, they say they do not feel strong at all. We all cry a lot. When do tears run dry? When do hearts mend? They don't, really, but we keep moving, one step at a time, and if that makes us look strong, let us soak up the accolades and feel strong. Even though these interludes keep happening: Going through the motions, when I am not doubled over with grief.

Maybe you will recite poems along with your lovely garden photos (your pine needles come to mind - gorgeous photography) and post on You-Tube as Mary Oliver has done:

When I am Among the Trees
Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It's simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

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Oh my! this!

One line does not make sense to me

I am so distant from the hope of myself

then she goes on to, seemingly, describe how she is while in the woods. How is she distant? What is she distanced from?

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This one is a must-read: Am I Not Among the Early Risers


Am I not among the early risers
and the long-distance walkers?

Have I not stood, amazed, as I consider
the perfection of the morning star
above the peaks of the houses, and the crowns of the trees
blue in the first light?
Do I not see how the trees tremble, as though
sheets of water flowed over them
though it is only wind, that common thing,
free to everyone, and everything?

Have I not thought, for years, what it would be
worthy to do, and then gone off, barefoot and with a silver pail,
to gather blueberries,
thus coming, as I think, upon a right answer?

What will ambition do for me that the fox, appearing suddenly
at the top of the field,
her eyes sharp and confident as she stared into mine,
has not already done?

What countries, what visitations,
what pomp
would satisfy me as thoroughly as Blackwater Woods
on a sun-filled morning, or, equally, in the rain?

Here is an amazement–––once I was twenty years old and in
every motion of my body there was a delicious ease,
and in every motion of the green earth there was
a hint of paradise,
and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.

Above the modest house and the palace–––the same darkness.
Above the evil man and the just, the same stars.
Above the child who will recover and the child who will
not recover, the same energies roll forward,
from one tragedy to the next and from one foolishness to the next.

I bow down.

Have I not loved as though the beloved could vanish at any moment,
or become preoccupied, or whisper a name other that mine
in the stretched curvatures of lust, or over the dinner table?
Have I ever taken good fortune for granted?

Have I not, every spring, befriended the swarm that pours forth?
Have I not summoned the honey-man to come, to hurry,
to bring with him the white and comfortable hive?

And while I waited, have I not leaned close, to see everything?
Have I not been stung as I watched their milling and gleaming,
and stung hard?

Have I not been ready always at the iron door,
not knowing to what country it opens–––to death or to more life?

Have I ever said that the day was too hot or too cold
or the night too long and as black as oil anyway,
or the morning, washed blue and emptied entirely
of the second-rate, less than happiness

as I stepped down from the porch and set out along
the green paths of the world?

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Let me know if you already own a copy of Mary Oliver's "west wind" poetry book, or if you'd like to - I'll send you one, Stacey. :)

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Oh how I love this. The glory of the mundane. It's breathtaking. Thank you.

No I do not have a copy and I would love one!

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Oh dear, 20 days ago you wrote this.... if you're still at the same address, let me know, and I'll send you some Mary O!

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@carolkean I am absolutely touched, both by your post and by this beautiful exchange of love and friendship between you and @owasco. Everything is beautiful, it reminds me of my own losses, but they don't look like yours, I just send you a hug and pray to God to give you strength.

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Thank you, Sweet Silver.
Here is a link to @owasco's first post about Niko:

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Oh, I really appreciate 🥰

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