my mother passed away on this day 11 years ago. her father - aka Gramps - was born this day 100 years ago. my father is in Fife, Scotland, where Mum was laid to rest with her parents. he and Mum's favourite cousin are going to the cemetery today to pay their respects...
::
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.'
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.'
- Robert Louis Stevenson
::
R.I.P.
LB
i forgot that my father and your mother passed so close together. (12 years for me last week.) sending you all the love i gots. peace in the ever evolving grief of your loss, my dear.
ReplyDeletethanks for those beautiful thoughts, dear one. love and peace to you. xxoo
ReplyDeletemiss you so. you show up in my dreams a lot.
ReplyDeletemy dear soul sister, i pass on some words from a soul now with you beloved mother...
ReplyDeletemother,
your voice leaning to soothe
your new child
was the first home-sound
we heard before we could see.
your young eyes
gazing on us
was the first mirror
where we glimpsed
what to be seen
could mean.
mother,
your nearness filled the air,
an umbilical garden for all the seeds
of longing that stirred in our infant hearts.
you nurtured and fostered this space
to root all our quietly gathering intensity
that could grow nowhere else.
mother,
formed from the depths beneath your heart,
you knew us from the inside out,
no deeds or seas or others
could ever erase that.
my love to you
x
thanks for that Paul.
ReplyDeletelovely.
i love that last verse. when i sift back over what Annie so beautifully called the ever evolving grief of loss, i am struck that when all is said and done, whatever the deeds or seas or others, whatever the messiness and complicated knots of feeling, Mother, is something that somehow transcends or lies deeper, beneath the heart, of the circumstances of the relationship after our birthing - whether it be a relationship of loss, or unknowing, or lack, or hurt, or pain, there is a home we all started in. a source. and there is something about that... that cannot be erased.
love,
LB
amen.
ReplyDeleteand paul, those words. are those yours? may i bottle them up and use them later?
biggest love to you both.
no words. all is too complicated to say. hope there is transcendence, even just for a moment, that lets what's been just be
ReplyDeletepeace to you
xx
and amen to that.
ReplyDeleteand may peace be also with you, my dear, and also with you.
c,xo