Remembering: An Elegy For My Father

 

Christmas tree by Tessa Rampersad on Unsplash

Remembering the day when your turn came

I knew that things would never be the same.

You went over the top on holidays

Our home was filled with the spirit of praise.

I always remember those Christmas scenes

I catch glimpses of childhood in my dreams.

It's now been thirteen years that you've been gone

The grief is not as sharp but still as strong.

notes

https://dversepoets.com/2023/11/02/mtb-lets-lament-without-the-lachrymose/

Topic:

someone close to you

someone vaguely known e.g a neighbour

someone totally unknown except through deeds or writings eg a dead poet perhaps like the recently deceased Louise Gluck

a group of people (eg as in Gray’s “Elegy written in a country churchyard”)

Form: Must include these three elements, ordered thus:

lament –expressing grief and sorrow

praise – admiration of the deceased

consolation and solace

It can be written as 3 distinct sections/stanzas or melded together but keeping the order above

Style: The elegy can be written in any metre the poet chooses.

Those of you who prefer more stricture and guidance might like to try the Elegiac metre:

rhyming coupleted lines (AA;BB;CC etc though not separated into couplets)

written in dactylic hexameter and pentameter

The last two lines aren't in strict keeping with the form, but I wanted them there.

https://girlieontheedge1.wordpress.com/2023/11/01/its-thursdays-six-sentence-story-link-up-62/

The prompt word is turn. Since I can't play by the rules and my poem has eight lines instead of six, I won't be linking up this time.

https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/2023-november-pad-chapbook-challenge-day-4

Write a catching poem. 

You will find the word catch in the above poem.

Something has been vaguely steaming my ham for quite some time. It isn't a big deal, it's just one of those things that mildly perturbs me, so I'm going to get it out in the open. It has to do with my occasional use of multiple prompts.

A few years back, I used a lot more prompts in creating my work than I currently do. I believe this was partly because of ADHD and partly because of a lack of confidence in my abilities. Whatever the case, the prompts helped inspire me, as they still do.

One fellow, and I'm not going to name names, wrote an entire post about not understanding people who see the need to use multiple prompts.

These days if I use more than one prompt it's because the first prompt may spark an idea but I need more to help the idea manifest. So, I roll down my list of prompt sources until I find what I need to work my magic.

I'm explaining shit anyway because I'm sick of this foolishness nibbling at me.

My dude, what difference does it make how many prompts another poet does or doesn't use in the creation of his or her work? I'm not coming to your house, holding a gun to your head, and commanding you to use more prompts or else. I fail to see why someone else's process differing from yours would be cause for writing an entire dissertation on the subject. 

Anyway, I thought of this because I used three prompts in creating this poem, and I don't apologize for it. If anyone just can't understand why I would do such a thing or thinks the use of multiple prompts is akin to setting my neighbor's house on fire or strolling down the street naked with a strip of toilet paper clenched between my butt cheeks, perhaps consider that maybe this is a you problem. 

I have real problems to occupy me. I couldn't give a gnat's fart in a category five hurricane how many prompts someone who isn't me uses to accomplish their writing. 

Here's a tune that never goes out of style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZH2bmbUTl4

First and Last Memories: WEP Challenge

I can't remember

the first time I saw your face

I was a squalling goblin

I remember well

the last time I saw your face

your earthly struggle finished

I recall winter

a time of painful beauty

you always loved the holidays

42 words

For my father

May 31, 1936

-

November 28, 2010

With love from your Ornery daughter

Image by Gustavo Belemmi from Pixabay

I'll always remember the Christmas when I was 10 years old as the best Christmas ever. Somehow, everything just came together as it should that year.

The father owl in the image has bright blue eyes. My father had blue eyes as well.

https://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/2022/11/wep-december-2022-challenge-first-time.html

 notes

Major points only, I think. The work is kind of personal.

The poem is a Choka, a form of Japanese poetry used for storytelling. I chose a 5-7-7 pattern for the verses.

https://poetscollective.org/poetryforms/choka/

November PAD Challenge 2022: Day 29: A Quintet of Couplets

 

Image by SarahCulture from Pixabay

I

I feel just like a banyan buried in the snow

What the hell a banyan is I can't say I truly know

II

What kind of nightmarish choices will we have in the next election?

Someone with more brains than a turnip would be a good selection.

III

I wonder if I jinxed myself at some point in the past

So many wishes I wished on stars never came to pass.

IV

I wonder where my soul will go on the day my ashes scatter

Will I be off on a new adventure, or will it just not matter?

V

The letter in the envelope challenged me to choose between truth and dare

I put it aside for later, procrastinating without a care.

~Ornery Owl Has Coupled (or Coupleted)~

Image by Chiplanay on Pixabay

https://pixabay.com/illustrations/owl-bird-animal-hand-writing-5070039/

notes and prompts used

https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/2022-november-pad-chapbook-challenge-day-29

Prompt: 

Write a truth poem and/or write a dare poem.

You may have noticed the absence of a Day 28 poem. You are correct. The prompt for Day 28 was to write a remix poem. I save my remix poem for December 1.

https://imprompt.wordpress.com/2022/11/28/day-28/

The prompt asks participants to take the following list of words and turn them into titles.

BANYAN

TURNIP

JINX

SCATTER

ENVELOPE

Yeah--I deviated from the prompt.

"Titles?" scoffed I. "Pish! I shall use these words in my couplets!"

https://imprompt.wordpress.com/2022/11/29/day-29/

Write some couplets.

Today's Playlist

https://odysee.com/@GamingAmbience:6/the-ascent-the-warrens-blossom-hill-%281:5?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

C'mon, ya scrooges, let's get in the spirit of the season!

https://odysee.com/@Radioman:a/Y2Mate.is---Christmas-Music-From-Another-Room---Relaxing-Christmas-Ambience-with-Muffled-Christmas-Music-QeDzM6HKr5k-240p-1654936036014:b?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

Yesterday was the 12th anniversary of my father's passing. He was always a big fan of celebrating the holidays. I hope there's music like this and plenty of cheer where he is now. 

Charity Sunday: In Memory of my Dad

 

Today is the eleventh anniversary of my father's passing. He had a serious hemorrhagic stroke in 2006. In the following years he had more strokes, developing vascular dementia. During his working life he had been a college professor. Towards the end of his life, he would read and re-read the same line in a catalog. He also developed congestive heart failure. His circulation was so poor that at the time of his passing, his lower legs were purple.

Collier Hospice in Wheat Ridge, Colorado was the second best thing to being able to pass away at home. The room was spacious, pleasant, and quiet. The staff were attentive but allowed for plenty of private family time. On the night before he departed, I read my father A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas. He always read it to my brother and me when we were kids, along with Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I know that in this lifetime, I will never again be able to read A Child's Christmas in Wales aloud because I can't get through it without breaking down.

I will donate a dollar for every comment received on this post to SCL Health in honor of my father.

Link to learn more about Collier Hospice.

https://www.sclhealth.org/locations/lutheran-hospice/services/hospice/

Link for the SCL Health Foundation donation page.

https://www.sclhealth.org/ways-to-give/

I apologize, but NaNoWriMo in conjunction with the November Poem-a-Day Brain-Dissolving Challenge has dissolved my brain and I can't think of an excerpt to post. If you would like to read a gloomy holiday-related poem that will appear in a future anthology, follow the link.

https://poetryofthenetherworld.blogspot.com/2021/11/november-pad-challenge-2021-ghost-of.html

I'm adding in the 28th chapter of my NaNoHellMo project. I'm 1000 words from being able to stick a fork in that fucker. Be forewarned, it's a long read.

Day 28

28 November 2021

Spirit of the Universe, please set aside everything I think I know about myself, about my story, about my need for validation, and especially about you, Universe, so that I may have an open mind and a new experience with myself, with my story, with my need for validation, and with you, Universe. Please help me to see the truth. Amen.

Today is the 11^th anniversary of my dad’s passing. It was about a half-hour ago that the hospice called my mother to inform her that he was gone. The ringer on my phone wasn’t working so she had to call twice. On the second time she said something hurtful that has stuck with me. She said “you’re never here for me.”

I don’t want to sit too long in this place. My mother is better these days, not as angry any more. However, my parents’ disappointment in me has always been palpable to me. I think it’s been a driving force in my life. I want to show them that I can be successful without having to do what they want me to do because I can’t do what they wanted me to do.

My parents helped me a lot financially over the years but it always came at the price of having to listen to how disappointed they were in me. I felt like I was always begging them to see what a mess I was, to please have some understanding for me and to let me get better so I could succeed on my terms.

I remember when I got the job in the independent living section of the retirement community where I worked. It was such a relief to not have to kill myself in the long-term care center anymore. Part of what got me the job was my EMT license. I was never able to work as an EMT because I would have had to take a $4 per hour pay as an entry level EMT over what I was making as a C.N.A., but the license still helped me.

I liked the job in the independent living section much better. I had a lot more autonomy and there was far less heavy lifting. I was proud when I told my father that I’d finally found a job that I thought I could stick with. His response was “well, we’ll have to see about that.” He and my mother were hell-bent on having me get my nursing license so I could make more money. There went my feeling of pride in one fell swoop.

When I did get the nursing license some six years later, I made between $2 and $6 more per hour than I had made working as a resident assistant, and I was killing myself working 60-hour weeks. My sciatica got better because the first case I had involved working with a one-year-old infant whose case resolved.

The next major case I had would be the main client I worked with for the rest of my career in nursing. It might have been okay if the patient had stayed with the agency that I was working with, but there was a serious disagreement between the agency and the patient’s mother, so he was transferred to a different agency.

I signed on with the new agency but kept my foot in the water, so to speak, at the agency I was already with. I had good (though expensive) health insurance through them. I did not know about the Medicaid buy-in if it existed, and I don’t know if it existed in 2016. There can be dry spells working for homecare agencies, so I figured it was smart to be signed on with more than one.

Working as much as I did fucked my health to hell. One of my patients developed a severe respiratory infection which he passed on to me. I had to call off from my other assignments so I wouldn’t pass it on to those patients, but my coordinator told me that I could keep working with the patient from whom I’d picked up the illness because I couldn't re-infect him and laid on the guilt by saying “the family really needs you.”

My diabetes was getting worse and I wasn’t on insulin yet. I was really, really sick. There is no way under the sun that I should have been working. During the night, I sat by this patient’s bedside. I would play games on my tablet or write on my laptop. Sometimes I dozed off, but it was a light sleep and I would always snap to if something were amiss.

I didn’t snap to on this occasion. I recall looking at the time when I started feeling so drowsy that I knew I was going to go under. I was in a state of complete unconsciousness for the next 20 minutes. When I woke up, the patient’s father was sitting at the end of the patient’s bed glaring at me. I collected my things, apologized profusely, and left. I knew what was coming.

I think that I had a T.I.A. (transient ischemic attack) brought on by all the stress that my body was undergoing. I was well and truly unconscious. I was, unsurprisingly, fired from the first agency. I wanted to rail at my coordinator for putting me in that position, but I remained stoic during the process, responding only with “yep” and “nope” and finally saying “okay, bye,” and leaving.

It wasn’t so bad at first because the second agency kept me on with the patient I’d been working with before. Unfortunately, his case worsened to the point where he needed more care than a regular LPN could provide. He had a rare x-linked genetic disease and was going to start needing infusions. I am unsure if he is still alive. He had lived longer than most kids diagnosed with this condition.

I tried to go back to work in a long-term care center when the homecare agency was unable to find me another suitable client. It didn’t work out. The diabetes had taken a lot out of me physically by then and I felt like I was going to pass out. I also felt confused, probably as a result of my blood sugar taking a dive.

There is a high rate of burnout in long-term care and this is because they work their staff to death.

I made a promise to my father that I haven’t been able to keep when I was sitting beside his body in his room at the hospice. I promised that I would finish my Bachelor’s degree in English. My father was a college professor and was always disappointed that I only had an associate's degree. Unfortunately, I am too busy to take on even one more thing.

One always hears these stories about people getting a lucky break after years of hard work. I honestly don’t think I’m ever going to be able to join that crowd.

https://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2021/11/this-coming-sunday-28th-of-november-is.html

Family Tombstone

Image Source

a memorial

a place to sit and reflect

on past memories

my father's name is there now

my mother's will be one day

~cie~

This time, I was a disobedient jerk-face on purpose. I was inspired to write this entire Tanka rather than a Tan Renga. You are still welcome to throw overripe produce at me. 

Dad

31 May 1936 - 28 November 2010

Carpe Diem 7 Days Before Christmas: Light

Click to Enlarge

Haiga created in Pixlr 

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Carpe Diem #1778: Moonlight Rail

Image by Myriam Zilles from Pixabay

flying in moonlight

trains travel the winter night

father sings his tale

~Cie~

Notes:

Today we were asked to revise a Haiku by Masaoka Shiki (14 October 1867 - 19 September 1902). I believe my verse is more an interpretation inspired by Shiki's original poem than a revision. In a time gone by nearly 50 years ago now, my father (31 May 1936 - 28 November 2010) would play his guitar and sing old railway and folk songs. The ninth anniversary of my father's passing is tomorrow and I wrote this poem to honor him.

the wild geese take flight

low along the railroad tracks

in the moonlit night

© Masaoka Shiki