neo-’, if I might, I’d like to submit that the thing you may be searching for here is ‘familiarity’.

Years ago, my wife was driven quite literally beyond hope with the loss of both parents, six months apart. Numerous family dynamics exacerbated this loss, but none so viciously as the reversal of roles that had taken place during their lives, turning parent into child and child into parent in many ways. This reversal led to her never having ‘left home’, but instead to her remaining–to support and care for both parents (as well as a sibling) through elder years, strokes, seizures, terminal cancer, sepsis, ICU, hospice and finally, death.

Effective therapy was required to get beyond this monumental trauma and continues today. As explained to me, coping with this involves understanding that in some ways the experience was very much like the loss of a child and a parent at the same time, and that recovery required, among other elements, the passage of time.

Having spent 40 years in their presence, that presence became the normal, dependable, bedrock reality of her life. Their absence is alien, grating and saddening in every way, and the notion is that many years will have to pass without them before that absence begins to approximate anything remotely resembling normal. She needs to become familiar with life without them, which involves making years of new memories that don’t include them as active, day-to-day participants.

Having spent 8+ years of my life as part of this process prior to their passing, 6 years ago, I can vouch for the validity of this idea in our case.

So perhaps the metaphor holds, at least inasmuch as time may heal all wounds, but the scars from the deepest of those will never fade at all and will never be anything but agonizing to touch. And perhaps that’s as it should be.

As a postscript, and to your notes on Walsh, Lightner, et al., I’m glad to relate that today’s memory-making finds my wife well into the process of turning her High School education into a Psy. D., with planned certifications in Gerontology, Transgender and Family Counseling, and Male Victimization, and I anxiously await the experience of seeing the monuments and poetry I know she will create in this field.

When Norm Geras asked what my favorite quote was, I immediately thought of the one from Flaubert:

“words are instruments we use to beat out tunes on broken drums
for bears to dance to, when all we really want to do is move the stars to pity.”

When I was able to write “Your Death” to Shelagh, my poem about her leaving and my grief, I knew I’d passed a landmark…when I get a chance I’ll find it and post it on Neighborhood.

The statues are stunning. I went to your post and looked for a long time but I didn’t comment. Too moved. Wish they had copies you could order..

The Garden called Gethsemane
     In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
     The English soldiers pass.
We used to pass — we used to pass
     Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
     Beyond Gethsemane.

The Garden called Gethsemane,
     It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
     I prayed my cup might pass.
The officer sat on the chair,
     The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
     I prayed my cup might pass.

It didn’t pass — it didn’t pass –
     It didn’t pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
     Beyond Gethsemane!

It is much the same in learning about the Holocaust or the Gulag, or in my case, the persecution of Baptist friends in Romania. People endure the unendurable all the time.

I have four sons, nearly all grown. None have been in the military (yet). But each of them at one time or another has had to knowingly walk into situations of heightened danger. I recall the first time I choked out to my oldest “You may be called upon to be heroic. Be ready,” trying to transfer all my thin courage to him. I wondered if I were some sort of madman to even say such things.

Kipling’s son had bad eyes. Kipling pulled strings to get him in and commissioned. He was killed in 1915, fighting with the Irish Guards (of whom Kipling wrote a poem). One of his friends said the last he’d seen of the young man, he was crying from the pain of a mouth wound. I expect his wound was less painful than his father’s, and sooner over.
Try Kipling’s “Epitaphs from The Great War” There’s something for everybody.
Or see the throw-away lines about lost children in “Daughter of The Regiment” and “Without Benefit of Clergy”.

Yet it may become worse, as spoiled kids become spoiled adults, unable to practice compromises they never had to do before.

Without a doubt, church and family were a big help. The weakness of these institutions today is perhaps a luxury attendent on antibiotics and vaccines. If these should fail we will need to relearn old, hard, lessons.

Dymphna is traveling right now — but I’m sure you’ll hear from her later.

Since you’re doing poetry, here’s the sonnet I wrote to recite at Shelagh’s funeral:

REMEMBERING SHELAGH

Of the many who knew the many of you
there were few enough who knew you well,
and of the stories that are ours to tell,
a myriad versions, and all of them true:

A gutsiness of life and love,
an eyebrow arched, a toss of the hair,
the level gaze and the withering stare,
a fist of iron in a velvet glove.

Mother and daughter, sister and friend:
how shall we cope with your laughter gone?
Too lately begun to have reached this end,
a spring afternoon on a shaded lawn.
Accept if you will this bitter rhyme,
and be with us here this one last time.