The Correspondent
Gilbert’s dying. It became the whole thing. You, Bruce and Fiona, my brother, our friends, my work, the house, our life, all of that was sitting on the sidelines, but I was in the ring wrestling, bloody, half-dead, with Gill’s death. Parenting the other two, trying to help them with their own grief, was like acting. I could say what needed to be said, but I was only thinking of myself in the ring with Gill’s death. I have asked Bruce and Fiona about that period of time. I was surprised to learn they’re both in therapy. I think neither of us was able to shepherd them in those first crucial months, submerged, completely, in the swamp water of despair. We were needing the same thing, you and I, a temple in which to tuck away and disappear from the earth, to mourn at the altar of our desolation, but we had the children, so we could not. Could we have held onto each other? I’ve wondered. We did the best we could and it was not enough. The four of us came away injured, but is there any other way for a person to come through? Oh, Gilbert. I do hope there is an afterlife as I have always believed, a heaven. I hope I will see him and know him there. I believe I’ve been looking forward to death on one hand.
From the archives
·
2005
The Sea
My father worked in Ballymore and came down in the evenings on the train, in a wordless fury, bearing the frustrations of his day like so much luggage clutched in his clenched fists. What did my mother do with her time when he was gone and I was not there? I picture her sitting at the oilcloth-covered table in that little wooden house, a hand under her head, nursing her disaffections as the long day wanes. She was still young then, they both were, my father and my mother, younger certainly than I am now. How strange a thing that is to think of. Everybody seems to be younger than I am, even the dead. I see them there, my poor parents, rancorously playing at house in the childhood of the world. Their unhappiness was one of the constants of my earliest years, a high, unceasing buzz just beyond hearing. I did not hate them. I loved them, probably. Only they were in my way, obscuring my view of the future. In time I would be able to see right through them, my transparent parents.
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The Sea
My father worked in Ballymore and came down in the evenings on the train, in a wordless fury, bearing the frustrations of his day like so much luggage clutched in his clenched fists. What did my mother do with her time when he was gone and I was not there? I picture her sitting at the oilcloth-covered table in that little wooden house, a hand under her head, nursing her disaffections as the long day wanes. She was still young then, they both were, my father and my mother, younger certainly than I am now. How strange a thing that is to think of. Everybody seems to be younger than I am, even the dead. I see them there, my poor parents, rancorously playing at house in the childhood of the world. Their unhappiness was one of the constants of my earliest years, a high, unceasing buzz just beyond hearing. I did not hate them. I loved them, probably. Only they were in my way, obscuring my view of the future. In time I would be able to see right through them, my transparent parents.
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WORDS TO LIVE BY
2011 ·
NON-FICTION
NEW MUSIC