The workshop goes from Aug. 29-31, and August 31 is the anniversary (yahrzeit, in Yiddish) of my mother's death -- this year is the first anniversary (as I mentioned in my last post), so it is very significant. In Judaism, we light a yahrzeit candle on the anniversary of a death, and each Friday night at Shabbat services, the congregation recites the Kaddish, the Mourners' Prayer, for people in the community who have died within the past month OR whose death-anniversary falls during that week, whether one year ago or fifty. This is a very comforting and connecting tradition.
I would welcome the opportunity to work with Lorna Crozier at any time, but realize, too, that I will want and need to do some writing about my mother during this anniversary, and a workshop with other poets, in a beautiful wooded setting -- in a building off the grid, using solar power -- will be a great place to do that. I once had a dream that equated Solar power with Soul-ar power -- and I'm sure both kinds of powers will be in full force. I have spent much of this summer thinking about events of last summer, when I visited my mother in July and could see she was beginning to prepare for death, and then in August, during her last few weeks. She was 91, had been in Assisted Living near her home in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, for two years, and was physically "frailing," though her mind was clear until very near the end -- the days when she subsided into death, with morphine easing both her pain and her need to be in control. The hospice people, who let her finish her life in the familiar surroundings of the Assisted Living home, were wonderful and supportive -- even though my mother first thought that hospice meant a one-time shot to let her die, as one would do for a dog or cat. She remembered the movie, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" But gradually she let nature and the universe take their course, and fell into a final coma after seeing my son, her grandson one last time, touching his face as well as hearing his voice on the phone. I was glad that he could be there, accompanied by his partner Rebecca and their friends Jason and Jaunna (and Jaunna's twins, in utero!) Life goes on.
Just before I received the phone call to come down to Pennsylvania, on August 14, I had written a poem, "Moving," about her coming journey. Writing this helped me envision and prepare emotionally for what was coming, and I want to share this poem here (below). I recently rediscovered another poem, that I wrote in 1972, about the closeness my mother and I (an only child) had -- and the dangers of being too-close, like vines entwined around two trees, binding them together. Life is about creating an always-changing balance between being alone and individual, and being connected to loved ones and in community -- we need both, I think, but our needs are different at different times in our lives. As the currently popular film-poem. "How to Be Alone," tells us, it's important to cherish and nurture our time alone -- our relationship with ourselves -- but also, it's good to connect and enjoy time with others; this even seems built into our bodies: babies need to be touched to develop well and "turn on" some of their genes, and we have "mirror neurons" that allow us to empathize with and respond to someone else. Of course, we have to be two separate people to do this effectively.
Around the time I wrote the poem, my son (age 30) and I went to see a performance of Cirque de Soleil -- not only spectacular in itself, but also a beautiful metaphor for these emotional and "soul-ar" acrobatics. (in many of the acts, the performers are both indivduals and intimately connected to the others in their act, depending on each other for the show and even for their lives).
My father died in 1993, so now I am an "orphan" -- the dreaded word from 19th century novels! -- but also experiencing another "rebirth" into a world of both connections and spaces-between.
So here is "Moving," recently published in Living Legacies: A Collection of Writing by Contemporary Canadian Jewish Women, Volume II, edited by Liz Pearl (2010). I'd be interested in hearing other people's thoughts about the death of parents -- which, of course, is experienced differently by each of us, depending on many things, including our relationship with our parents, our age when they die, what we feel is our (intangible) "legacy," and so much more. For more information about Living Legacies, please visit: http://at.yorku.ca/pk/ll.htm.
MOVING
My mother is moving to another country
one without borders or passports.
She doesn’t need to buy a ticket – the moving date
is open, and it’s only
a one-way trip.
They speak another language there,
vaguer than ours, with no past
or future tenses,
just an eternal present.
She doesn’t need to pack up her property;
everything will be taken care of
by the proper authorities.
In fact, her body is getting lighter,
unpacking itself
little by little –
these organs, muscles, bones
becoming cumbersome,
unnecessary.
She still reaches out, casting lifelines
to people back home,
she remembers names, faces
(even her grandfather’s three sisters,
so long ago – she throws me this memory
like a faded rose, almost disintegrating
in my outstretched hand)
but they are losing their meaning, their connection.
Does it really matter who is who,
or who said what to whom,
or even who’s on first?
She will have the last word,
which may be silent,
not waving, not drowning, but disappearing
before our eyes – the final act of magic
in this earthly cirque de soleil et de la lune.
My mother is moving
far away, alone,
into another, unknown country.
Ellen S. Jaffe, for Viola A. Jaffe, May 17, 1918—August 31, 2009
