At the end of the street, a maple is blazing. And on Monday’s drive through the mountains, hillsides were studies in russet and gold.
On the whole, though, it’s been a muted palette this autumn. Or maybe my vision is clouded this year.
It’s difficult sometimes to know where the interior weather ends and the exterior weather begins.
If a journal is to have any value either for the writer or any potential
reader, the writer must be able to be objective about what he
experiences on the pulse. For the whole point of a journal is this
seizing events on the wing. Yet the substance will come not from narration but from the examination of experience, an attempt, at least, to reduce it to essence. — May Sarton, The House by the Sea
I think about this as I remember the cemetery, the flag half mast, a large hawk circling in the leaden sky. There was a bank of autumn color from one stand of trees. Otherwise, the white stones and green grass made for a frightful symmetry.
Beyond the boundaries, cattle grazed, and hills rolled on in the distance. As the priest said the ancient prayers, my eyes looked down at the flower petals under foot, one white, one yellow.
A peaceful place. A resting place. The sun broke through the clouds just as the burial was complete.
Nighttime lingers here on the western edge of Eastern Daylight Time. It is dark until 8. Great light for a writer, at least this one, who finds the dim, still, early morning hours the best ones for creative pursuits. Add the mournful whistle of a freight train — which sounds here once an hour or more — and the picture is complete.
So I pause for a moment before turning east and moving on. I pause in this house I know and love so well. Pause with the boxes of Mom’s clothes and papers that I’m taking back to Virginia. Pause with the solemnity of what I’ve been doing, what I must continue to do.
Morning email brings messages from friends, words of support and love. How lucky I am to have them. How could I do this without them?
It’s been more than a week now since my mother passed away. The wake and funeral are behind us. Closets have been cleaned, clothes sorted, papers boxed for another time. The Kleenex box is almost empty. This is not a good time to run out of tissues!
What I’m searching for, I realize, is not closure but continuance. How will Mom go on? I can save a few of her sweaters and dresses, plenty of photographs and other memorabilia — but what I want most are the words she’s written.
Father Linh, who said Mom’s funeral mass, wisely made the Word his theme. “In the beginning was the Word,” he said. In the Word we find eternal life.
Mom started the Museum of the Written Word. She dealt with words all her life. She didn’t write as many words as she had hoped. But she encouraged others to write them. One of them was me. I best get on with it.
I don’t even know if I’ll be able to go through with it, but I hope I will. Today at Mom’s funeral I hope I’m able to stand up and say a few words about her. It’s a sad duty, but an important one. Because she can no longer speak for herself, we must speak for her.
But how to do that? How to sum up a life in a few paragraphs?
No choice but to plunge in, to type words on a page, print the page, edit the page, add some new words, remove some old ones. No choice but to try and do it. Because the eulogy is not just for the person who is gone, of course; it’s for all of us still present, all of us who must keep on living.
The long drive west, this time with new eyes. Wondering how often I will make this trip with Mom and Dad both gone. Still, when the people are gone, the people become place. So visiting the place becomes a way to be with the people.
Here in the house every sight my eye lights on is filled with thoughts of Mom. Here is the dining room with its Chinese screen print, the vase I bought her in New York City’s Chinatown, the bird prints that go back as far as memory.
In the family room, her books on writing are stacked on the organ bench. I can barely look at them. Those were the books whose ideas we’d talk about for the Museum of the Written Word, some of them I gave to her. Books on Cuneiform script or the Dead Sea Scrolls. The books stand for all of Mom’s projects, all the big ideas she had and never quite completed.
At home in Virginia I’m well insulated. Here in Lexington, I’m raw. This is what we must do, I know; this is part of grieving. To look, to see and remember, is as painful as it is necessary.
In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about the word “passion,” how overused it is, how intimidating it can be. “Just follow your passion.” “Discover your passion and then everything else will follow.”
Of course, this is poppycock. It implies that the creative life is a matter of being swept away by something rather than working away at something. Gilbert suggests that instead of focusing on passion, we focus on curiosity.
I believe that curiosity is the secret. Curiosity is the truth and the way of creative living. Curiosity is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. Furthermore, curiosity is accessible to everyone.
What a comfort it was to read these words. So obvious yet so overlooked. So simple but so true.
Walking is usually a tonic. It lifts me up and out of myself. But there are limits to its powers, which I discovered yesterday.
I had debated whether to come into the office at all, knowing it would be difficult whether I was home or downtown. Deciding it was better to be distracted, I made the trip in and was, as I had hoped, pulled into the demands of the day.
About 1 p.m. I received a nasty email. Nothing horrible, just an alumnus complaining that his book was omitted from our authors page, the kind of thing that happens occasionally when you deal with large volumes of information. The sort of thing that would usually roll off my back. But yesterday his unkind response put me over the edge.
I tried walking but my Kleenex got a bigger workout than I did. I cut the stroll short, made my way back to office and completed the work day as quickly as I could.
There are walks that inspire and walks that comfort and walks that sometimes must just be endured. There are days like that too. I think I’m in for a few of them.
(Photo: Claire Capehart)
My mother died on a crisp autumn Saturday afternoon a few minutes before 3 p.m. She had been ailing for some time, but the end came quickly.
When my father died, it was easier to put the words into some order, to describe the indescribable. But for Mom — a writer, the founding editor of two magazines and creator of the Museum of the Written Word — I’m having trouble. She was my mom, after all, and I was so close to her.
Last Sunday I slept on a strange little pull-out couch next to her hospital bed. I woke up throughout the night and looked at the glowing orange numbers of her pulse-oxygen meter. Admittedly not the most restful sleep.
But at about 5:30 a.m. I dozed again and dreamed that Mom and I were taking a trip together. She was driving a car — barefoot and in her hospital gown. At some point I realized this was not the best way to be tootling around the countryside. “I should take the wheel,” I said to myself. And I did.
It was not a subtle dream, but it was comforting. It was helping me know that life will go on. I’m not sure exactly how, but it will.
In the hours I’ve spent at Mom’s bedside recently I’ve found myself staring at a TV screen playing a continuous loop of nature shots. There is some New Agey music that goes with it, what we used to call Muzak, only with an airier, lighter touch. But the sound is usually turned off, so I’m looking at photographs without the benefit of soundtrack.
One thing I’ve noticed is the similarity of the shots. Though the landscapes may be of mountains, seascapes or red-rock deserts, the foreground is usually green. There’s a reason for that, I believe, something to do with our earliest origins, the safety of enclosure giving way to an open view. Splendor in doses. Domesticated wilderness.
All I know is that it is mesmerizing. I look at Mom, I look at the screen, I think of all that can be held in a head and a heart.