Category Archives: Passings and Death Notes

red thread

14 Thursday Nov 2019

Posted by in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Passings and Death Notes, Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on red thread

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

— after a loss.

If love is what we make of it, then what
counts is not who we’ve lost but everyone

waiting for us at the end. “Love, spirit,
baby cat, I’m so proud of you. It’s done.

You’re safe. Sleep. Wait for me. I will follow.”
“His heart has stopped,” the vet said. I woke to

a strange empty bed. No nuzzling. No
medicine to prep. No deep sing-song mew

for food. Maybe my faith (“Love, wait for me.”)
is wrong? Maybe there’ll be no one waiting?

It’s hard when all you have is a red thread
joining you two. My altar looks lonely

without him sprawled in a sunbeam, grooming
his dark coat, burning with flecked shades of red.

this is december 26, 2013

26 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by in Passings and Death Notes, Poetry

≈ Comments Off on this is december 26, 2013

Tags

, , ,

my grandmother died right before Thanksgiving
this morning my grandfather died a few hours
after Christmas the stones of my house’s
foundations have been taken away in less
than two months I am standing but hurts so much

the problem with words

13 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by in Illustration and art, Passings and Death Notes, Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on the problem with words

Tags

, , , , , , ,

img074

img077

img293

late night party

mama after the party

][][

—– —– —- emptiness into emptiness into
this, which did not die. How can I be brave

when all this now stops? All that we once knew
must go … go down into darkness of grave

dirt — words stop, too, they’re heavier than earth;
right now I can’t shape them. I am a nurse.

I know about the science of death, birth
and all that lies in-between. What is worse

than this? needing but being unable
to find words, emptiness into — I know

I need my words about my grandmother
when we all gather at her funeral

but our matriarch is dead, she must go
now, wait for all of us to come to her.

note:

On Monday morning, November 11th, my 92 year old grandmother passed over. I will be off-line for a while, I must fly out to California and help my family prepare for the funeral. Almost everyone on my father’s side died before I was born. Up until now no one on my mother’s side had died, This isn’t the poem I shall read, but it is the poem about not knowing what to say.

I hope everyone is well. Cheers.

passing of heaney

30 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by in Illustration and art, Passings and Death Notes

≈ Comments Off on passing of heaney

Tags

, , ,

seamusheaney

The BBC has just announced that the Irish poet Seamus Heaney has passed away at the age 74. Besides winning 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature, I adored his translation of Beowulf (1998). Below is one of my favorite sonnets of his.

Clink a pint and Oíche Mhaith.

Requiem for the Croppies

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley…

No kitchens on the run, no striking camp…

We moved quick and sudden in our own country.

The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.

A people hardly marching… on the hike…

We found new tactics happening each day:

We’d cut through reins and rider with the pike

And stampede cattle into infantry,

Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.

Until… on Vinegar Hill… the final conclave.

Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.

The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.

They buried us without shroud or coffin

And in August… the barley grew up out of our grave.

we shall miss you, annette

08 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in Passings and Death Notes

≈ Comments Off on we shall miss you, annette

Tags

, ,

annette1

annette2

annette and fishbone

Annette Funicello dead at 70

L.A. Times: “Annette Funicello, the dark-haired darling of TV’s The Mickey Mouse Club in the 1950s who further cemented her status as a pop-culture icon in the ’60s by teaming with Frankie Avalon in a popular series of “beach” movies, died Monday. She was 70.”

Top photo: Annette Funicello (right) and Darlene Gillespie were the female co-stars in the “New Adventures of Spin and Marty,” a 30-part serial presented on Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club during the 1957-1958 season.

Second photo: Funicello (right) and Gillespie met again as adults to celebrate “Mickey’s 40th Anniversary” on Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color in 1968.

Bottom photo: Annette and Fishbone on the set of Back to the Beach.

sakine cansiz assassinated in paris

10 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by in Illustration and art, Passings and Death Notes

≈ Comments Off on sakine cansiz assassinated in paris

Tags

, , , , , ,

Cansiz pictured on left

Cansiz pictured on left

The BBC has just released information about the shocking assassination of Sakine Cansiz and two other Kurdish women in Paris.

Three Kurdish women activists – including a co-founder of the militant nationalist PKK – have been found dead with gunshot wounds in a Kurdish information centre in Paris.

The bodies of Sakine Cansiz and two others were found on Thursday.

France and Turkey both condemned the killings.

The motive for the shootings is unclear. Some 40,000 people have died in the 25-year conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK.

However, Turkey has recently begun talks with the jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, with the aim of persuading the group to disarm.

“Rest assured that French authorities are determined to get to the bottom of these intolerable acts,” he said.

“I condemn this violence,” Turkish government spokesman Bulent Arinc told reporters. “This is utterly wrong. I express my condolences.”

The BBC’s James Reynolds in Turkey says two rival theories have emerged about the killings.

The deputy chairman of the ruling party, Husein Celik, said that the killings appeared to be the result of an internal Kurdish feud.

The theory was later picked up by other officials and commentators in the Turkish media, who suggested that PKK factions opposed to the talks were to blame.

But Kurdish activists said the killings were carried out by forces in the Turkish state itself who wanted to derail the talks.

Our correspondent says that in Turkey many believe that there is a so-called “deep state” – a powerful nationalistic establishment which seeks to undermine the work of democratic governments and activists.

louis simpson dies at 89

18 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by in Passings and Death Notes

≈ Comments Off on louis simpson dies at 89

Tags

As the BBC noted:

Louis Simpson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose work often explored the darker side of life in the US suburbs, has died at his New York home aged 89.

Born in Jamaica in March 1923, Simpson – the son of a Russian mother and a lawyer of Scottish descent – moved to the US at the age of 17.

The Columbia University graduate published more than 18 books of poetry.

He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1964 for his fourth collection At the End of the Open Road.

Its title was inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem Song of the Open Road, which presented a vision of America replete with optimism and potential.

The collection contained the short poem In the Suburbs, in which he offered the bleaker suggestion that there was “no way out” for those “born to this middleclass life”.

His admirers included such writers as Seamus Heaney and William Matthews. In an interview with the BBC News website in 2007, poet Sean O’Brien described Simpson’s work To The Western World as “a wonderful, elegiac political poem about possibility”.

Simpson, who served in World War II with the 101st Airborne Division, lived for many years in Setauket, New York on the north shore of Long Island.

His final collection Struggling Times was published in 2009 by BOA Editions and dealt directly with his old age and declining health.

Speaking on Tuesday, BOA Editions publisher Peter Conners remembered Simpson as a man who “chronicled his life through his literature”.

Remembering the Tree Mother, Kenya’s Wangari Maathai

08 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by in Passings and Death Notes

≈ Comments Off on Remembering the Tree Mother, Kenya’s Wangari Maathai

Tags

, ,

Today Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize winner, was laid to rest in Kenya. The BBC stated:

A state funeral for Nobel Peace Prize winner and environmentalist Wangari Maathai has taken place at a Kenyan national park she fought to save.

Mrs Maathai, whose Green Belt Movement planted an estimated 45 million trees in Kenya, died last month of cancer.

Thousands of mourners lined the route of the procession to the funeral in Uhuru National Park in Nairobi.

President Mwai Kibaki praised her courage, tenacity and “selfless service to the nation”.

Mrs Maathai, who died on 25 September, was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, in 2004. She won the award for her campaigns to promote conservation, women’s rights and transparent government.

Maathai’s legacy is a blessing for us all.