So let’s zip on over to Wikipedia
first thing this morning and look up the phrase “facepalm”: “A facepalm
(sometimes also face-palm or face palm) is the physical gesture of placing
one's hand flat across one's face or lowering one's face into one's hand or
hands. The gesture is often exaggerated by giving the motion more force and
making a slapping noise when the hand comes in contact with the face. The
gesture is found in many cultures as a display of frustration, disappointment,
exasperation, embarrassment, horror, shock, surprise or sarcasm.”
In brief, DS 191 begins: On a
light & bright autumn day, the family pet beagle catches a bird on the back
porch and dispatches it. Kate, his wife, is on the porch killing flies, then
disposes of the little insect carcasses by feeding them to the beagle. Then…Wait
for it…Wait…“This is a house of death”. Uh-oh… And then, O man, here it comes:
and one of Henry’s
oldest friends was killed,
it came on a
friend’ radio this week,
whereat Henry
wept.
All those deaths
keep Henry pale & ill
and unable to
sail through the autumn world & weak
a disadvantage
of surviving.
There’s that regret at aging, and
the mourning over the death of an (unnamed) friend, and it’s all very emotional
and dramatic.
I’ll admit I’m not in a very
death-charitable mood this morning. Maybe I should be. Last night we got news
of an old friend who just died. My wife knew her from where she worked, and we
rented a house from her and her husband, though we’ve been out of touch for
going on ten years now. She endured turmoil in her life—cancer, a brutal rape,
more—and she didn’t make it into old age. While I didn’t weep, and I’m not pale
& ill over it, the news got to me. She was good and nice, and just wanted
to live a simple, unpretentious life, which she did, but shorter than it might
have, should have, been. There is much sadness coming with this news. Resquiescant
in pace.
Henry, the deaths of certain very
close people can keep you “pale & ill” over a long period. No argument. But
not all of them. You get a pass today, though. Grief is not to be judged if it’s
genuine. It will manifest in countless ways—tears, hair-tearing, depression,
gloom & sadness are all widely recognized symptoms. If someone were to
suspect the griever, however, of using the situation to his own benefit
somehow, or of over-dramatizing it for poetic effect, then the support anyone would
tend to offer might begin to ebb. Just saying.
the
leaves fall, lives fall, every little while
you
can count with stirring love on a new loss
&
an emptier place.
Leaves fall. I told this story, a
true story, twice last week to friends. On a field trip outing with my son’s
class some years ago—he was in 7th or 8th grade—I got
irritated with something trivial and not worth mentioning from one of the
mothers and took my leave of the group for awhile. I was happy to get away and
lay down on a bench looking up at the trees. It was late October, a still,
quiet afternoon, utterly breezeless, but so late in the season that leaves were
dropping of their own accord anyway. It was time, breeze or no breeze. For no
reason, lying on my back looking straight up to the overhanging trees, my
attention focused on a particular leaf. Almost as if my attention was the last
straw, the minute but difference-making triggering force, it let go of its twig
while it had my attention, then fell in a long, slow spiral, and the stem of
the leaf stuck in the buttonhole of my shirt.
It felt kind of mystical.
Life came, and it will go. Along
the way, it gives so many gifts. Cherish the gifts. I’m less inclined to grieve
the end of the gift-giving. That’s what comes of not cherishing. Unwrap, give
back, let go gracefully when it’s time. Lodge your stem in the buttonhole over
someone’s heart.
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