She is gone.

[ What I read at the wake.... ]

I woke up Tuesday morning--- after very little sleep--- and instantly thought "She is gone." A few minutes later, my husband phoned me from the hospital to confirm what I was already certain of.

Sometime later that day, I was in my car and found myself unconsciously singing the words of an old and all too familiar song "They are falling all around me...."

In the hours that followed, a strong image was taking hold of Grandma as a giant sequoia or redwood. A little bit more conscious now, I did realize that this image was the song's central metaphor. And wasn't the experience of knowing Grandma was gone just like coming upon a fallen giant? Awestruck, breath taken, in full appreciation of what it is and was and still selfish enough to wish it were still and forever standing.

On Wednesday, at work in my classroom, the phone rang and a colleague was saying "Oh... I'm sorry," and I thought this was a condolence call about Grandma but they went on to say "have you heard--- Maya Angelou has died."

Now, only a literature teacher would get this kind of call when a writer has passed away! And I had not heard, but as I hung up the phone and walked back to my desk I was thinking "Of course these two titans--- Grandma and this great poet--- would go out together!"  And now there was the fact that I would no longer think of the passing of one without thinking about the other.

Then it was Thursday, and we were getting ready to come here and there was a previously recorded interview with Maya Angelou on television. She was asked about the recent passing of her beloved brother, and she referenced her poem "When Great Trees Fall" which I had also never heard of, so I googled it and found these perfect words: 

When great trees fall

in forests,

small things recoil into silence,

their senses

eroded beyond fear.



When great souls die,

the air around us becomes

light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,

see with

a hurtful clarity.

Our memory, suddenly sharpened,

examines,

gnaws on kind words

unsaid,

promised walks

never taken.


Great souls die and

our reality, bound to

them, takes leave of us.

Our souls,

dependent upon their

nurture,

now shrink.

Our minds, formed

and informed by their

radiance,
 fall away.

We are not so much maddened

as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of
dark, cold

caves.



And when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,

slowly and always

irregularly. Spaces fill

with a kind of

soothing  vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed. They existed.

We can be. Be and be

better. For they existed.

― Maya Angelou

So now it is Friday--- and this morning, before I sat down to write what I am reading now, I thought about what it is to be a transplant into this family --- into this company of women particularly; my husband's mother, D___, his aunts; N___, C___, T___, and L___, his cousins; V___, C___, N___, and D____ and of others, of  G____ & A____ her namesake.... The image that came to me was a circle of giant trees and I suspected... I had the vaguest recollection that that this circle had a special name. I thought of what it might be and searched "grove of trees." These were the phrases that came up: "Grove of Titan Redwoods" and "Grove of Giant Sequoias," but the first one was "Mariposa Grove of Sequoias." So I had been correct about the word 'grove', but I had forgotten the other term entirely (the mariposa).

These images and words will now forever be linked to Grandma for me; the juxtaposition of the delicacy, sensitivity and tenderness of a butterfly, the strength of a titan tree,  the grove of the family remaining, men and women alike... and the words:

"We can be.

 Be and be better.

 Because she existed."

I have been away from blogging for quite some time. Mostly this was due to the great hurricane seen here in the Northeast in October of 2012 and the technological problems that remained long afterward. But it has also been due to general fatigue.  This week, my husband lost his 95 year old grandmother. It is hard to believe you have the right to mourn such a loss when there was such longevity to go along with it, but mourn he does... and as a member of that family for more than twenty years, I am sorrow-full, too. I spoke at her wake and will post what I had to say soon. Otherwise, in the words of Samwise Gamgee, "Well, I'm back."