Penultimate:

The Requiem

My poems just seem to show up all of a sudden; most show up without titles. This was one of them—and yep it’s a true story. But when I went back to read it, I thought I was writing just about April snow. Turns out not.

And then I realized why it had been asking to be written now.

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it snowed the other day here.
it’s april and well after the start of our spring
when we should have said goodbye to snow
a long time ago.

a lot of cold things keep coming back
unexpectedly
and in the dark
when you thought you said 
goodbye
to them all. 

and yet, 
april snows can still be
beautiful.

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And this from John O’Donohue—the real reason you’re here:

[…] the dead are not distant or absent. They are alongside us. When we lose someone to death, we lose their physical image and presence, they slip out of visible form into invisible presence. This alteration of form is the reason we cannot see the dead. But because we cannot see them does not mean they are not there. One of the oldest and most beautiful metaphors to convey this change of level is the journey of the larvae to become a butterfly. […] Transfigured into eternal form, the dead cannot reverse the journey and even for one second re-enter their old form to linger with us a while. Though they cannot reappear, they continue to be near us; and part of the healing of grief is the refinement of our hearts whereby we come to sense their loving nearness. When we ourselves enter the eternal world and come to see our lives on earth in full view, we may be surprised at the immense assistance and support with which our departed loved ones have accompanied every moment of our lives. In their new, transfigured presence their compassion, understanding and love take on a divine depth, enabling them to become secret angels guiding and sheltering the unfolding of our destiny. Those who die come closer to the source of everything creative.

~ from “Beauty: The Invisible Embrace,” p 213.

Today we take the penultimate step in the journey of goodbye/hello.

Funeral program: Left—back page 4; Right—cover page 1.

Funeral program: Internal pages 2 and 3.

Funeral Mass zoom link: April 15, 2023 @ 11am

Tomorrow morning, at the graveside for our private family goodbye/hello, the “ultimate” step, in all of that word’s varied definitions.

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To see through to where words
Are blind to say what we would love,

Forever falling softly on our faces, 
His gaze plies the soul with light,
Laying down a luminous layer

Beneath our brief and brittle days
Until the appointed dawn comes
Assured and harvest deft

To unravel the last black knot
And we are back home in the house
That we have never left.

~ John O’Donohue: “To Bless the Space Between Us,” p. 220

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