Posts Tagged ‘love’
Thinking on Death and What One Leaves Behind
My grandmother passed away recently. She was a great woman who helped raise me and my cousins when we were children, and she has continued to touch my life even after I grew up and didn’t have as much interaction with her as I did then. After a five year battle with cancer, she passed away having seen all her sisters, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews. She leaves behind a legacy that will continue on for a long time to come.
When she planned her funeral, she made it very traditional. She knew exactly what she wanted and had the services carried out in the way that she saw fit. So she went out on her own terms even as she planned them. We even had a laugh at the graveside when we realized that she was late to her own funeral as she and we had said that she would be. She was buried like many people are, and now, there will be a grave that we will visit every year like we do the rest of my grandparents and relatives that have gone on.
However, I find this problematic on so many levels as this sets up a shrine that many will go to to remember her. This is the notion that always makes me a little antsy and causes me to have scruples about what I want when I ultimately go through that process that we all have to. I will tell you that I don’t want people to feel obligated to go to a place and visit me. I don’t want anything like this. I want people to remember me in the small things: a kiss we shared, a laugh, a song we sang too loudly in the car, a judgmental look, whatever it may be. I want it to creep up on them and for them to find themselves suddenly taken with it. Now, this doesn’t mean that I want people to cry (although I know that some might… I’m pretty sure that one of my sisters would if she read this right now), but if that’s the way one reacts, then, they should do it then.
But why I’m writing this now, other than trying to find some catharsis in my grandmother’s loss, is that a student video from Dorian Lebherz & Daniel Titz, two film students, came across my Facebook feed. It is a student directed advertisement for Johnnie Walker Whisky, but it is a beautiful thing. The sentiment is beautiful and is captured in the direction and acting within it. However, the most beautiful part might be the poem voiced-over the entire piece, a poem written by Dorian Lebherz & Daniel Titz and John Reilly:
“Walking the roads of our youth
through the land of our childhood, our home and our truth
Be near me, guide me
always stay beside me so i can be free, free
Lets roam this place
familiar and vast
our playground of green frames, our past
We were wanderers
never lost, always home
When every place was fenceless
and time was endless
our ways were always the same
Cool my demons and walk with me brother
until our roads lead us away from each other
and if your heart’s full of sorrow, keep walking, don’t rest
and promise me from heart to chest
to never let your memories die, never
I will always be alive and by your side,
in your mind
I’m free”
As I write this now, I find myself crying a little, which is big if you know me. There is just something here that touches on everything that I’m thinking and feeling right now. So I hope this doesn’t bum you out too much, but this is just lovely.
Happy V-D
So, this Valentine’s Day, just like many in the past, I am not with someone to celebrate. However, I am perfectly okay with that. Now, many people may wonder how a person could be okay with being alone on this day of commercialistic love. It’s simple; I am okay with being alone as of right now.
It may seem a little odd that someone is okay with being alone. Yet, I have a good group of friends that I will probably be hanging out with to watch some television or something like that. It’s actually quite nice to be alone on some of these “holidays” (and I use the term loosely when talking about V-D) because you have no worries about who you have to please or if you have to do something big to make them know that you care about them. I think that it’s all a bunch of crock anyway simply because why do we as a culture have to agree that there is one particular day to tell that one special someone you love that you love them. Honestly, I don’t know that I agree with celebrating V-D simply because it is a ploy to get you to buy your sweet heart (significant other, big momma, sweet daddy, whatever…I could go on with these terms of endearment) a gift to show them that you care.
I mean seriously folks…Does V-D really, truly mean anything beyond the cutesy cherub on the card shooting his arrow into two hearts (which is really gruesome imagery if you really think about it)? I think that it began as a commercial venue to get people to spend money (and yes, I know about St. Valentine…yet, really people don’t know a lot about him because historically, we don’t know that much), and now, we as parts of the world economy feel as though we have to purchase things to be good “lovers” of the world and of those around us. Additionally, I’m not completely blameless on this front. Matter-of- factly, I bought several of my friends presents for V-D because all of us are going to be hanging out with each other on this holiest of holy love days…eh…I’m not as bitter as I sound in the post…I just wish that people would show each other the love year round instead of having to wait for a special day to do so.
Simply put, I wish that we didn’t have to feel so inclined by the media, by the displays as local chain stores, by the goading of people who don’t really matter (I’m talking about the people who rag on you if you don’t buy someone something on V-D), by the materialistic world that we live in to go out and spend money to show individuals that we love them. Why not say it with a good deed? A smile at the person who is sitting alone? A hug for your friends? So, that would be my idea for the rest of the year, try to make V-D a part of everyday life instead of the extraordinary day of the year.
Living
Daily, I battle
The tempest trying to
Blow my spirit into
Submission.
It takes me by
Surprise and sucks the
Wind out of my chilled
Lungs.
Drowning on the land, it’s
Harder to breathe
Sleeping in a bed of
Squalor.
Slowly hands touch,
Lips meet, a run of electricity
Up my spine
Shooting.
Emptiness cannot be
Voided by this
Illusion playing…
Lying.
Elizabeth
A dream of a woman in white.
The pearls against her breast
Cascading from elegant hair.
She is a modern goddess.
My fate lies in the palm of her
Loathful hand, but I speak too soon.
She seems to love me
Takes me to her chamber.
Wishes to see every part of me…
Before she lets the executioner’s axe
Fall where hours before her rose lips
Suckled.
Flecks
A shudder in the dark
Feeling for the warmth
That left hours before.
One night of connection
Before heartache reawakens
To a new degree.
Touching another person
Allows us to touch god
Again…again.
Nirvana
For years, I dreamt of a land.
Far away from this one,
Where people live forever
An immortal land beyond the stars.
But a cold chill came to my consciousness
And told me that my ideas were flawed.
No place existed where we can be free
From sorrow and death.
A queen’s ransom is paid to assuage
My supple longing to feel flesh,
To feel the warm sun upon my hair,
To be wrapped in the wind.
Piteous blackness waits for me
Writhing against my temporal existence
Pulling me into the nothingness
That waits for me beyond the pale
