Last month I wrote a "placeholder" post stating that I had tried to write about the passing of my mother-in-law, but was unable to do so and gave up after a couple of tries. I said I would try again, but I doubt I could do any better than I could then. So instead, although I am not a poet in any way, shape, or form, I offer this poem, composed in my head while in the car on the way to the funeral and finished the next day.
While driving to a funeral
Bobby is gone, gone, gone beyond
Gate gate paragate
Parasamgate bodhi svaha
Her son at the wheel driving east
Rain is lashing at the windshield,
spraying up from the passing trucks
and while thinking of how we pass
from life into death, around us
life continues its circus
in the sheeting rain, driving wind
Massachusetts bumper stickers:
Obama is still President,
My Other Car is still a Broom,
Jesus Saves and the Yankees still suck
This my home state, and now, and now
One last journey to the North Shore
At least for reasons tied to blood
And bone, and the love of this man
And the others who share that blood
And how strangely appropriate
The blinding rain and shrieking wind
To sagas stories and plot lines
To complicated webs of past,
To layers of pride and of doubt
To all the love and the anger
Kneaded into the famous bread
And those who came to adulthood
In the eye of this hurricane
Each making their own peace with her
She was not my mother, and yes
I saw the complicated side
But I loved her for bringing him
Into the world in the first place,
And for what she wanted to be,
And for the things she tried to be,
And was, when clarity could cut
Through what had been handed to her.
A friend of mine once said to me
“One can be a difficult parent
And still be a great friend,” and
She was that to me, and it is
A terrible thing to witness
A heart beating in the shambles
That Alzheimer’s leaves in its wake--
So you will understand, when I
Saw the ashes mixed with earth, why
I spoke the mantra “gone beyond”
Gate gate paragate
Parasamgate bodhi svaha
the doorless doors of the Pure Land
do not require us to bring
All of our Stuff along with us
No eyes no ears no nose no mouth
No junk no faults no garbage, but
Just the cloudless blue sky of mind.
March 14, 2010
