She held the tattered, wartorn flag in her scraped, bleeding hands as she crawled along the rough pavement on raw knees. Long, dark hair fell over her downturned face.
A thousand assaults endured, a thousand losses under the blazing heat of hundreds of suns and dark, lonely moons. A gaping hole where her heart once was.
She begged for mercy. You’ve taken nearly everything, please, no more. And yet still more . On and on she crawled, on elbows now, legs behind, followed by a trail of blood and tears.
I have nothing left. Her breaths ratched, but testament to her sustained presence in this horrid world. Unrelenting. Suspended.
Is there no mercy, she cried. Youve taken my father, you’ve taken my security, my life as I knew it. You’ve taken my health, my passions, my dignity. Please don’t take another beloved. The embodiment of innocence, joy and meaning. I don’t ask to spare me. Please, today, spare her. Spare her, for another day.
The despair and hopelessness was palpable and her raw vulnerability laid bare as she begged. Things didn’t have to be this way. Things could be different. The whys were long lost in the cries into the wind. She collapsed at the altar of fate. And waited.
Five Minutes Later Update: Fate spared her today, as soon as I published this. Thank you for this mercy. Thank you.🙏 ❤️
It’s funny how a song you haven’t thought of in a long, long time will just suddenly come to you in a moment. This morning the sunshine was sparkling outside, and I was quite apprehensively getting ready to embark on yet another vet trek to try to solve an enigmatic issue.
Suddenly Paul Simon’s lyrics and tune trickled in, from a mysterious source, like a meandering stream-
People say she’s crazy She got diamonds on the soles of her shoes Well, that’s one way to lose these walking blues Diamonds on the soles of her shoes
And I smiled. I hadn’t thought of this song in a long, long time. It was released by Paul Simon in 1986, I was still a young child. Dad of course was quite taken by Graceland’s release, I heard it a lot around the house, and in the car on the tape deck.
An odd secret about me is that I think of this song every time a pair of shoes have chosen me over the years. The sparklier the better, and they always symbolically represent my heart. I wear my soul.
I know and understand the standard interpretation of the song, but on another level I suppose everyone brings their lived experience and being to a song, merging with it to create a transformational experience of sorts. For me, the song has always been about wealth, but a very different kind of wealth.
Even as a child I knew intuitively what it meant. Diamonds on the soles of your shoes meant experiencing reality in tune with the spark of life, of living deeply and in touch with the soul. Once I encountered Joseph Campbell and some of the great romantic writers in High School I understood this to be following my bliss, living a life of sensations, and having one’s heart pulse with the rhythm of the Universe. It also meant self actualization and being true to your innermost self. Society will not stifle or shape the spark that is within.
Dad experienced life differently than most. He drank life in deeply, savouring the sublime. Life was richly experienced and interpreted through the great artists and thinkers of hundreds of years; a tapestry of great thoughts and metaphors interweaving with raw experience and leading to a transcendent experience. His poetry was a beautiful manifestation of that way of living.
He taught me so much about experiencing the world. He showed me the diamonds on the soles of my shoes, my inner jewel. I think deeply, feel deeply, experience deeply, too. In some ways I’m almost too much hampered by my senses, being absolutely wired to fire. I frequently experience sensory overload.
There is something special when you connect with someone else who experiences life on a deeper level and higher vibration. I’ve had this connection with Dad, and I’ve been blessed to have it with others. It is also possible sometimes to draw another into that alternate plane of experience, the interior world, and into living an authentic life. In the case of the song, to me, the “she” has done just that. By the end of the song the pronoun has shifted, from “her” shoes to “our” shoes.
And everybody here would know what I was talking about I mean everybody here would know exactly what I was talking about Talking about diamonds
People say I’m crazy I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes, yeah Well, that’s one way to lose these walking blues Diamonds on the soles of our shoes
I must continue to try to apply basic photo composition and editing skills to my life these days.
Some life activities I’ve had to crop out of my life by design (lack of bandwidth to cope) and others I’ve had my hand forced into dropping (due to a lack of focus, joy, or time). My frame is much smaller and much more narrow than it used to be. In fact, it’s currently set to tunnel vision, the micro focus end of the spectrum. I’m attempting to manage essential needs with very limited resources and trying not to let anything too important go off the rails. With such a narrow canvas I must choose content with surgical precision.
Weekdays come and work becomes the central subject, a fisheye lens, with all else blurring to the edges. Above all else I must keep earning a living to pay the bills and exorbitant exotic pet fees I keep racking up. Unfortunately my already overtaxed senses max out quickly during the workday, leaving zero emotional energy to manage other life necessities by midday or beyond.
Similarly, my thought processes are also under construction these days. If wake in the middle of the night, I am assaulted by bullets of uninvited, intrusive thoughts of fears and trauma. They echo my darkest fears, my deepest agony, my most hidden trauma. As soon as they hit there is that awful gut-clenching, breath-taking lightning bolt seizing of the body. I see them for what they are. I refuse to give them light, to reinforce those pathways. Drop the brightness, lower exposure. I breathe, untense, center, come to present moment. Change the slide. Again and again they come. Again and again – breathe, untense, center, present moment, and distract. Change the slide. The process is exhausting. It wears you down.
Where do these terrors come from? Are they locked in some mind vault, word for word, buried under trivial distractions during the day? Is this where my quivery in-breath comes from if I try to breathe deeply- am I trying to hold the torrents back in order to semi-function?
During the day, it’s a similar experience, but narrower in content and scope. It’s always triggered by the awareness of the magnitude of the loss. The bottomless chasm opens, the thunderbolt of infinite pain hits. Sharp intake of breath, sometimes doubling over, sometimes reaching out to steady oneself. I could not live in that state permanently. Breathe, intense, center, present moment… Change the slide.
I’m working on reframing other things in my life, too. A current crisis screams for me to resolve it quickly, but there is no easy resolution, no scientific dissection and diagnosis, no neat and tidy bow I can place on a perfectly wrapped package. My head always focuses on what isn’t, what should be, and wants to resolve, taking linear steps to make it right. My head longs for order and the righting of wrongs. My life these days is unfortunately nowhere near as tidy as this.
The antidote, I know, is continuing to work on accepting and focusing on being grateful for what is. Changing the reference points that bring meaning to the picture. Changing the focus. Choosing elements to brighten and the elements I need to de-emphasize and tone down.
Knowing this in the head, and applying it to your heart, however, are two very different things. It is especially hard when you feel you are tied to the railway tracks, but still trying to grasp moments of being. Sure, the train’s far out of the frame, but you can still feel the vibrations of the train headed toward you in the distance… How is it possible to remain impervious to threats- those known, or those unknown, for that matter? I’ll continue to struggle, fiddling with the editing tools.
A week later, after begging on our knees for mercy from the Very Separate House Insurance Department that looks after Mystery Discounts, we finally received signs of life via email. The wording was succinct: “I attached the updated policy document for you to review.”
A quick scan of the new policy document revealed a new monthly price, with no explanation on why or how it had changed.
In sum, and with exact numbers this time, the monthly rates over a three month period are below:
Dad and Mom’s rate was: $247.95 (August)
Mom and Estate of Dad’s rate was: $657.71 (September)
Mom and Estate of Dad’s updated rate, as of today, is: $204.27 (October)
Foto by Marcela
We appear to have won this latest round or house insurance roulette, although we cannot tell you exactly how or why the rate dropped so dramatically again. One thing is certain- if I hadn’t mustered what little strength and determination I have left to advocate for Mom, the long-term outcome would likely have been far different.
Dad by Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” – the mending wall referred to in poem, 1991, Robert Frost Farm, Derry, N.H.
As Robert Frost ponders in his poem “Mending Wall” (poem is included at end of post for reference), “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”. In the swirling patterns of disorder and chaos characteristic of this summer, my parent’s fence began to buckle and fall over in the front. Dad’s heroic efforts over the years to keep it upright began to fail in August.
Weighted down with grief and newfound caretaker responsibilities for my childhood home, I consulted with the neighbour.
The neighbour, unlike Frost’s neighbour, was none to keen to assist with the challenge despite a collapse over winter seeming imminent. Time to implement Plan B.
Disclaimer: I am no handyman, with limited time, tools, and resources. But armed with fence post stabilizers from Amazon, a rubber mallet, and stubborn determination, I was ready to take on the challenge of time and decay.
Above, the fence in question, in imminent danger of collapse.
And so, with assistance to hold the fence upright, I set to work, hammering the steel post into the ground.
Bang. Why was the fence made so poorly. Bang. Dad did a beautiful job painting it a few years ago. Bang. Why did the neighbour put their wooden frame vegetable garden so close the fence can no longer be fully upright? Bang. Winter is coming. Bang. Ladybugs everywhere, this is disgusting. Bang. Why did he have to die. Bang. Why. Bang. He deserved so much better. Bang. We deserve better. Bang.
I channeled my fury at how my life has gone, rage at the health system, anger at… everything. Kneeling on the lawn on a Sunday morning, the morning of Thanksgiving, when there would be no get togethers for us. No coming in the door to the delicious smells of dinner on the stove, no laughter over Dad stealing the dill pickles as we tried to cut them for guests, no Dad asking Mom for a five minute warning for dinner to be served so he could properly dispense the wine he’d purchased. Just shadows and a fence, and me trying to prop up my life- our lives- trying to keep things moving forward and safe from a constant threat of chaos and despair.
Above, the fence and three posts, properly reinforced.
The middle post is unable to stand entirely straight due to the thoughtless neighbour’s raised garden built too close behind, but nevertheless the post is vertical again, and strong enough to withstand the winter’s bitter north winds. I hope I remain so, too.
***
Robert Frost’s poem, of course, has much depth and complexity to it. Like so many great pieces of art, as you approach the work at different stages of your life, different meanings refract back. At this stage in my life, for example, I was considering the walls I need to build up to endure attending work, and sorting out the estate, through my grief, as well political polarizations playing out on the broader international word stage.
“Frost was actually the first major poet I encountered in any depth back in grade 11, fall of 1965: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, “After Apple Picking”, “Birches”, and “The Road Not Taken”. What appealed to me back then was his descriptions of Nature and he interwove delight and wisdom into each work; I grew up close to Nature in the Winnipeg outskirts so his speakers and situations were easy to identify with.
I returned to him and his work back in 1991 and 1993 on two fall literary wonder-tours of New England. My wife and I visited his Derry, N.H. farm, his Franconia, N.H. homestead, his grave in Bennington, Vt., and the hotel where he often stayed at in Amherst, Mass. when teaching or reading at Amherst College.
Reading his poems aloud at 74, I found many nuances I was not previously aware of. Looking back, he remains my favorite American poet.”
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: ‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’ We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: ‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him, But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father’s saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Two months since Dad’s celebration of life, and still one flower from the service’s floral arrangement clings to life. 🩵💜🩵 So too does the pain, the trauma flashbacks, and the beautiful memories.
We visited the cemetary today. The plaque and granite pillar was installed by the City, along with the beautiful, deeply engaging epitaph Dad had requested. We lovingly placed a few flowers, including a rose each, at Dad’s, Grandpa Reade’s, and Grandma Reade’s graves, and took time to remember – remembering and honouring their beautiful, giving lives, the beautiful hearts gave us so many reasons for thanks on so many past Thanksgivings. We remembered all the beautiful dinners we shared together, the deep conversations, the lighthearted laughter.
Last visit to South Haven we were almost wiped off this planet by a speeding car going through a dead red as we turned on a green turning arrow. Less than 2 seconds separated us from life and death, from travelling to the undiscovered country. Yet still I type, for another day. It was a sobering reminder of how tenuous and gossamer this life we lead truly is.
The sun is low in October, despite visiting at solar noon. We aren’t sure if we will be able to make the drive out during winter. Cold temperatures and snowy, icy roads tend to keep us close to home.
We made the best of the visit. The shadows cast long across the ground, and indeed, my heart.
Mom has been punished for having her husband pass away- her house insurance just went up from $247/month to $650/month.
We are still going to provide a few details about security, new roofing and furnace, and will be providing confirmation that there is no longer any outstanding mortgage.
We were advised that Dad had some kind of apparently super secret stealth discount (of course neither woman we spoke to have any information about this, they’re in some “other department”. He has provided consent long ago (possibly blood sample, too) and his score came back an “A”.
Mom has now officially provided her “consent”. They will take her name away to this other department (?in the back room of a casino?) where they will plug her name in and see what her “score” comes out to (I’m thinking roulette wheel spinning, or perhaps tossing her name down a flight of stairs and seeing which step it lands on), and what kind of discount this score warrants.
Obviously, an increase of $400 a month is unsustainable.
We await the news of this “discount”. The lady we spoke to will first “get word” (possibly carrier pigeon) from this Very Separate Department and then she will call us back.
For five decades, Dad has been a driving force in my life. I wanted to do him proud and bring him joy. So much of what I did and how I flourished was due his nurturing, his encouragement, and his loving enthusiasm. He caught me when I stumbled, rallied and cheering me on.
The turning wheel of the seasons and celebrations throughout the year provided anchors to come together, have fun, participate in rituals and jokes, and enjoy great food. One of the nights in ICU I walked Dad through the holidays with the greatest of love, talking about our special times, our jokes, our beautiful rituals, how he brought so much to everything, and how much I was looking forward to more good times ahead with him.
—- Nights were the worst in ICU and the time when vitals would drop and alarms would clang and ring. I’d hear the panicked alarms of other patients struggling to breathe, hearts failing, IVs running out, so much struggling to live. I’d go home and my ears would be ringing, extreme tinnitus activated. When I would stand (unable to sit given set up) and talk next to him, holding his hand, Dad’s breathing would slow and the ventilator alarms would be less frequent. I talked for hours on end until hoarse… Until I had to run through the darkened hallways and collapse in the bathroom in a choking, coughing fit, also gasping to breathe. —-
I don’t plan on celebrating anything this year for the first time in my life. Any attempt would feel like a cheap, empty imitation. Whatever happens after this year, it won’t look anything like my first five decades with Dad. I’m under no illusions.
It’s hard to imagine a path forward out of just surviving. Standing among the ashes I sometimes wonder what the rest of my life will be like. I recognize there is opportunity, hence the title of this site. But still I wonder if/how I will find meaning, and what will drive me on.
