Note: The music composition featured in this post is “The Antarctica Desert,” which Michael exported on June 12, 2017. This is the first time it has been heard by anyone besides Michael and me.
Today is Michael’s birthday. It is also the two-year anniversary of his funeral, during which I delivered Eulogy for the Patron Saint of Insects.
After I published Letters to My Beloved for our thirty-fourth anniversary, one of my readers, William Klompus, sent me this moving note:
When my soulmate of 69 years died I sat in profound grief with pen in hand. The following came to me practically automatically and I light a candle and say it every morning:
“Thank you for the love we knew, Despite the pain that you’ve been through. I hope that now you are alright, And bathing in perpetual light. When you can be our spirit guide, We’ll welcome days you’re at our side. We love and miss you every day, and know you think of us that way. And when it’s time to meet again, I hope you’re first to meet us then. Love you.”
When I asked his permission to share it, he replied:
What a pleasant surprise to hear from you. Feel free to use the verse and my name. The poem is in my Amazon book “Verse and Converse,” which you might also enjoy. Speaking of tearing up there is one poem I left out of my book about our dog who passed. I’ll take the liberty of sharing it with you.
William’s heart-wrenching poem about his beloved German Shepherd unleashed a torrent of tears. I asked his permission to publish it as well.
William poignantly observed:
Dog lovers respond to: “We Had To Let You Go,” because the loss of unconditional love is so profound.
I noted:
You articulated the poignancy perfectly—“the loss of unconditional love is so profound.” The sadness is proportional to the love 💔💗
He then presented me with another gift—the Queen Elizabeth quote “Grief is the price we pay for love.”
As I am approaching the concluding chapter of my forthcoming book Ain’t No Sunshine When He’s Gone, I have been reflecting on the acute agony you make yourself vulnerable to when you open your heart to love—“the heights and the depths” as Sheldon Vanauken writes in A Severe Mercy, the foundational book of our marriage.
But what is life without love? No matter what suffering comes, love is worth it. And that, ultimately, has been the consummate lesson of my grief.
Three days after our thirty-fourth anniversary, I serendipitously discovered a poem I had commissioned street poet Tara Borgilt to write for Michael on January 2, 2013. I tried to capture Michael’s essence for her and told her his totem is the owl.
This is the same dazzling young poet—whose extemporaneous, exuberant expressions evoke E.E. Cummings—I had commissioned to write a poem for a beloved friend before her sudden death in 2012.
Finding Tara’s poem for Michael was like opening an old book and watching a cascade of pressed petals tumble into my lap.
Still clasping the petals, I captured the sequence of events that had led to my happening upon that surprise on August 21:
When I got up today, I looked at the closet and decided it was time to transfer Michael’s shirts and coat to the closet in the storage room.
The closet was partially blocked by a cardboard container of prints by a dear printmaking artist friend along with two of Michael’s 4x6’ masonite paintings and a tall skinny painting I created on a leftover strip of masonite in the nineties. As I was maneuvering around these items with the hangers of Michael’s shirts, I knocked them over along with some piles of books, a hat box, and some other random belongings.
I decided to move the cardboard container and masonite paintings to another part of the room with a few of Michael’s other paintings, knocking more boxes, papers, and things over in the process.
This led me to stumble across Michael’s assemblage titled “We Rebuild Lives,” his entry for a 1998 exhibition curated by our best friend.
I started looking for a safer place to put it. I checked the storage shelves for a spot and wondered what was in the cardboard box at the back of the third shelf. The flaps were partially open. I couldn’t open them all the way due to the height of the shelf, so I reached in and pulled out a giant Ziplock baggie with a booklet of Neenah Paper Classic Crest stock samples. I remembered I had stored something precious in there years ago but hadn’t known where it was since we moved over a decade ago and had forgotten about it in the meantime.
I opened it up and discovered a poem I’d commissioned by Tara Borgilt inside another Ziplock for a dear friend I’d lost touch with for years but then reconnected with after losing Michael. I’d never given her the poem.…
I then noticed a second Ziplock bag, this one with a poem I’d commissioned her to write on January 2, 2013, for Michael. I had completely forgotten about its existence and can’t even remember if I gave it to him! Surely, I did, but then why can’t I remember it? I wish I could ask Michael.
Then I found a surprise poem Tara had written for me and tucked behind the poem for my friend—again, something I’d completely forgotten about and wonder if I ever noticed since I’d been saving that to give to my friend later.
My hippocampus is so filled with research and knowledge for my present passions, much of my personal history has fallen into the crevices of the memory couch. I used to rely on Michael as my long-term memory for our personal history. Now I have to make peace with waiting for the memory to arise or the likelihood that I shall never remember, nor will I remember all that I don’t remember having forgotten.
Below is the poem, on the back of which appears the following dedication Tara typed on her vintage typewriter in red ink on an ecru-colored rectangle of paper:
For my beloved.Thank you for sharing this journey with me.M—
There’s a Tree Inside No Ax Can Touch
by Tara Borgilt
There’s a tree inside no axecan touch where the always -owl is watching. see her round wholes of bright rightousness, this star for that shadow and the cornercreature dances in an arc of triumph. be here be now be you free
.
to know the harsh brevity of time’s frantic spin is not to over- anticipate the topple but to be lifted higher by the rotating orbs the ripe moon spirals down into the owl eye,your eye,I.
.
and the tree inside and the feathered fruit we live by are stronger than fire than bruises and bloodlines here are roots to hold you know you drumbeat heatfeet heartdance romance celebrate!
. care-full the full breath ofcafof carfulcreation is that privet prayer by which the baloon lifts, and belonging is everywhere with the clouds and silence.
© Margaret Anna Alice, LLC
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Under her Micropixie of One Little Alien persona, Sanity Jane and I recently published her trip-hop version of my dystopian fairy tale, which is an absolute must-listen if you haven’t already heard it!
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