One of my favorite web sites is: The Writers Almanac at newsletter@americanpublicmedia.org You can listen to Garrison Keillor read a poem each day, and also hear other pieces of literary news like what great literary writer and philosopher was the only person to decline the Nobel Prize in literature. (Check out the site to find the answer if interested!) Today, October 22, 2009, the author of the featured poem is Louis Jenkins who titles his poem, "The Speaker." I liked it so well that I would like to share it here on my BLOG.

The Speaker

The speaker points out that we don't really have much of a grasp of things, not only the big things, the important questions, but the small everyday things. How many steps up to your front door? What kind of tree grows in your backyard? What is the name of your district representative? What is your wife's shoe size? Can you tell me the color of your sweetheart's eyes? Do you remember where you parked the car? The evidence is overwhelming. Most of us never truly experience life. "We drift through life in a daydream, missing the true richness and joy life had to offer." When the speaker has finished we gather around to sing a few inspirational songs. You and I stand at the back of the group and hum along since we have forgotten most of the words.

Every year at this time, I cannot help but think of my best friend who is now gone. Over Halloween several years ago, I spent a week with Sara in the hospital as she went through a bone-morrow transplant. Her favorite holiday of the year was Halloween; this is one of the things I loved about her...she loved dressing up, being goofy, and laughing...often at herself. She made me laugh all the time. I love a phrase from John Updike that I lifted from one of his novels which says, "When an exhilarating personality dies, it is the live performance we remember, the unduplicated presence, the shimmer and sparkle, and poignance, perceived from however far back a seat in the audience." This is how I think about Sara, and am grateful that I had a front row seat in her life. I also like the quote by Jeanne Moreau on the death of his best friend, "It would be unbearable if memory didn't exist...I hear your laughter. I see you writing in your office, the smoke from your cigarette forcing you to blink. At will, I can spend hours with you." For me it is hearing Sara playing the piano, or the flute, or laughing. When we were at the hospital together, I wrote a poem about that time, and want to remember it here.

SCARY HALLOWEEN

Her stem cell transplant
Is on Halloween
An event she never expected
On her favorite day of the year

She dresses up anyway
As she does every year
In orange and black
With a mask
Not nearly as scary as the masks
Doctors are wearing
In the hospital

She laughs and jokes
With the nurses
To protect the frightened
Small child inside
And knits a lovely scarf
As her own harvested stem cells
Drip slowly into her veins
To give new life

She refuses to be sick
Until the end of the knitting row
Is finished
And then,
"I have to throw up,
But not until I finish this row," she says

And then she begins
The wrenching, heart-breaking sounds
Of heaving her insides up
And when she is spent
Goes on knitting to get the scarf
Done by Christmas
A scarf for her daughter

And then...
Life goes on
One minute at a time
Whether outside in sunshine
Or inside the gray walls
Of this city hospital
Sitting among
A community of patients
With sad, solemn faces
In the chemo room
Hot and stuffy
Life saving masks over their faces
And the human determination to live
The joy of Halloween
Lost on them

Here, hope is to be well by Thanksgiving
In order to give thanks
And to feel good enough for
Pumpkin Pie
And really....just not to die
Too soon, too early
Too much before their time

This is the second time
For my friend to do this
The last big effort
For life-saving energy
To pour through her veins
And take hold.

She knows what is ahead of her
And the thought makes her weak
With the memory
Of medicines that make you sick
Multi-colored ones
Like Halloween treats
And the energy that will
Drain from her body
Before the new cells begin to grow

This living hell
Even though tempory
Does not feel like temporty
It feels like a lifetime
Of misery
And it is hard to see
"the finished line."

But, she will go on
With the will to live
Second by second
Minute by minute
Hour by hour
Day by day
And week by week
Until it is done

And then
There will be new Halloweens
To celebrate
And to, once again
Dress up in costume
Not ever again
As scary as this Halloween.

Sara had several Halloweens to celebrate before her death, and I am grateful for that.

Have you ever spent the afternoon in a cemetery? This past Sunday afternoon, I did, and though it was unseasonable cold requiring hats, scarves and gloves, Mike and I took a journey into some of our richest historical past via the Evergreen Cemetery Discovery Walk. Every year for the last twenty-five years, experienced actors and actresses have dressed up in period costumes and throughout the cemetery, acted out snippets of living history. The program is called, "Voices of the Past" and this year featured Abraham Lincoln in honor of his 200th birthday. Rich, poor, famous and infamous are all buried here, and many grave sites held people who were once very closed to Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln got started in his law practice here in Bloomington, Illinois at the age of about 21 and traveled the 8th Judicial circuit which took about two months to complete. During this time, he met some of his most lasting friends; many buried here in the Evergreen Cemetery. Featured in this Discovery Walk was David Davis, lawyer & friend responsible for getting Lincoln elected to the presidency, and his wife Sara, another political friend, Jesse Fell, two civil war soldiers (one white and one black), and wife of John Loomis, Abraham Lincoln's life-long friend. Twelve characters in all rounded out the Walk and included Abraham Lincoln himself telling about some of his friends buried here. Over and over again, Lincoln was depicted as a kind and gentle man and that reminded me of my own father who was a lawyer and spent much of his life trying to better the lives of the less fortunate. They would have liked each other. The Discovery Walk through the cemetery was an eye-opener for me. I had no idea I was living amidst such profound history.

TREES: BY JOYCE KILMER



I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon her bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.



I woke up this morning thinking about trees, and the poem by Joyce Kilmer came to mind. It is a poem that I learned in my High School English class many years ago, but apparently never forgot. The author Joyce Kilmer has always been synonymous with trees for me, I guess. And this is the time that I notice trees, more than any other time of the year. Today they are blowing about with signs of the coming winter and cold weather. Soon their leaves will change to all those awesome colors (why does that happen again?), and then their leaves will fall to the ground. There is a favorite book of mine by Leo Buscaglia called "The Fall of Freddie the Leaf...a story of Life for All Ages" and is an inspiring allegory illustrating the balance between life and death. Freddie the Leaf is one of the last leaves to fall from the tree he is on, and when he does, to quote, "Freddie landed on a clump of snow. It somehow felt soft and even warm. In this new position he was more comfortable than he had ever been. He closed his eyes and fell asleep. He did not know that Spring would follow Winter and that the snow would melt into water. He did not know that what appeared to be his useless dried self would join with the water and serve to make the tree stronger. Most of all, he did not know that there, asleep in the tree and the ground, were already plans for new leaves in the Spring." Having just had an intimate experience with death as I sat with my sister-in-law while she lay dying, this thought is comforting; that life goes on in some way, and that, even in death, we are part of life continuing. If you have never read this book, I recommend it; it is also good for children when trying to explain death to them.

I have some favorite trees; one being the Aspen of Colorado. When we lived there, we never missed a season to drive up into the mountains and see the spectacular array of Aspen trees awash in yellow color, their leaves fluttering like an orchestra playing their beautiful music all in harmony. Today, I am most happy with our Birch tree that lives in our back yard with her three white trunks coming gracefully up from the ground. She is a beauty, and in the fall, her leaves remind me much of the Aspens. And when she begins to shed her leaves in that dance of nature, I am always reminded of Freddie, and watch for the last leaf to fall to take its place in the mysterious cycle of life. Ah, trees...a precious gift of nature that we must continue to plant and preserve for our world to survive. I have been watching Ken Burn's National Parks documentary on Public T.V. and have a new appreciation for all the people who strove hard to preserve some of our forests and trees for the common good by way of creating the national parks. Thanks to all the men and women who did this for all of us. May we continue to preserve and keep our park lands for all future generations.