Happy Easter

Easter Morning

Easter Morning I rose in darkness
Affected by a dream
Hazy, warm, pulling my blankets around me
Found my way downstairs
To think about my grandmother.

The dream showed me this country woman, smaller, older
Who passed away several years ago
While I was stranded on another coast-
My grandmother as sure as anyone I ever knew was there.
She was pulling glass objects from boxes and sharing them with family,
If I'm truthful I didn't recognize everyone,
But they seemed family and the glass
Coded out for me somehow
Every reflection, facet, beautiful
Objectness of anyone who had ever crafted
Created, or walked before us.
She was sharing the pieces, what she knew of them.
Who made them or where they came from
Somewhere in all of this I put my head on her shoulder wondering
If she even knew me-that wasn't really answered either-
Though I assumed she did.
Many of the pieces were the most beautiful glass I've ever seen-we looked at them the way
One might view Native American treasures,
my family does love glass,
A crackled slightly, orange bowl was carefully revealed
As I asked about a crack- only to see others-she reassured me it was the kind of glass.
In my life my grandparents told us of family much this way
Their story, around a table.
This was around a low table, in a cabin-
except I felt the sheer value in this glass.
That was different.
To have a collection this grand.

A small child -beautiful blond-with a name tag in a Christmas tree shape-came in playing
Child to a cousin-her relations written on the tag. I knew them.
Kids darted everywhere and I explained to my two small girls.
One of mine leaving to the porch-grandma abruptly went to this wide open space too
Out on a beautiful wooden deck to gather others
Like the child had.

Somehow or other in this fascinating dream, so like my grandmother
I saw her doing these talks for televised crews as if
What she was saying suddenly had community value,
Was being recorded
And I recalled that while she was sharing her collection-
I asked about where this glass had come from- learning that much could not be returned
To rightful owners due to their passing from lives.
My father naming it with a word I can't recall.
Having their possessions with no one to give it back to.
Is that a word?

Easter this year brought me
A strange recollection of something that never was.
If I constructed it -then the warmth of her shoulder,
the gathering of family,
the feeling of belonging, the stories of who we are
these were the things-glass objects
That renewed my night life.




Listened to an NPR program yesterday on life after death, or rather the transition to death...and I can't figure out what show to link anyone to it-this was that absorbing -so I lost my thinking of what it was that was playing....the program was on different ways that people have come to think about this time of passing from life to ????  Such a time is much like that moment of birth I think. Not here. Alive.
It was very meaningful, with lessons about needlessly prolonging life in ICU's (we heard a nurse talk of the transition from life to death) and then heard about the loss of a puppy- the most difficult of the stories for me, connecting me to the loss of a cat when I first really understood death, shared a Buddhist perspective on the time of transition. 

Somehow what I really took in was about this idea of prolonging suffering in intensive care- when people force loved ones to suffer so they can think they've had more time to say they love them. I heard that. Or prolonging the inevitable- so they've done all they could- but their grief clouds out considering the suffering this ICU care brings- well after hope is gone-to the person dying.
I took that in because of recent scares in my Mom's illness and end of days, to prepare myself- and then my father called to say he's always loved me and always will. 
As he reiterated his time is short.
The meaning of that beyond words for me.
My parents are in their 80's, and now I'm forced to think about losing them. It is really tough. 
I cannot ever communicate how tough.

Spring, Easter, when I was just 7 or so I lost my kitty Cally. 
She was run over by a garbage truck early in the morning, and he was trying to get her. 
My Mom got her from the Emerson's as a kitten with a littermate, and she and Blackberry were two of the best things that ever happened to me. Their kitten Peachface lived many years with me, killed by Kevin Moore's father who drove like a madman down Roosevelt Street- never hitting my small brother as he came close to doing-but killing my cat one winter morning in February. He might be a very good man, but he also was a very careless one on a February evening. Such a hard lesson -death in our lives-that often is retaught in my life at Easter. I buried Cally in our daffodils with my father's silent help-it was a time of thinking yesterday.
Then later in the day-  as I said I spoke to my father, first time since a very bad call at Christmas when his back pain was overwhelming him and making communicating so hard- having to tell him of Mom's condition now, realizing that I had several impossible thoughts of things that none of us could answer. None of us-we are all turned by this to faith. 

Dreamt of my grandmother McIntosh this morning before sunrise. Axie. And so I wrote it as a poem.
I was seeing her in a big family gathering showing, of all things, a huge glass collection-telling me family history through these pieces (and while we do love glass and she had pieces- this was different), I miss her so, and I thought this morning of rising at 5 as a kid for sunrise Easter service-of living my life teaching the poorest among us. That was something I directly took from wanting to do over say, from the living of faith. Tending to the poorest of us seems what life asks of us. I think of the beautiful Easter banners that used to hang at Easter in the First Baptist Church in Morgantown proclaiming "He is risen." I loved those banners-often a rich purple or bright green satin.. There is mystery in life-one thing I have always loved of Christianity was its involvement with the idea of this mystery. 
A willingness to acknowledge that. What we can not know- I often find myself entwined there.

Yesterday, driving to get Easter chocolates for our children, my husband turned to me and said to my asking him about his beliefs-"there is a lot science can't know-of our life beyond the veil -they don't know anything." Uttering an oath he said-"but we are bound in a beautiful mystery." And he stated he believes that we "will rise to be with Christ and one another. " Having lost three people-his Mom, Dad, Aunt Mary, he has faced some very hard things-all at a very young age. His certainty was like a rock in that moment.

I suppose I share this rock he stands upon, because of the fact I appreciate so much that the holiday affords us -Easter I mean, gives a chance to think together, to affirm life, to puzzle, to celebrate, to look at poverty and need, to care about suffering, to recognize the error of our ways, to hold the body of a Christ crucified and see that his value in teaching was beyond words -even in showing us that we do not know what we do- but are capable of being forgiven.
I do not have words to contain all of the mysteries of just yesterday, because every bit of it was meaningful,  but if one day can hold so much-imagine that we have days to live to accomplish, understand, repent, change, think, to breathe in our commonalities, and love one another. That does gives me hope. And hope means so much. Let's hope together this beautiful dawning day!
Happy Easter!