This has been an odd, unsettling and downright
disturbing poem to write.
And at this
point I was going to include a half/inaccurately remembered quotation about
some nineteenth century writer or philosopher who when a very small child was
asked what he was thinking about, and replied, “Mortality!”
Well, I couldn’t find the quotation, though I
spent far too long enjoyably clicking through clues on the Internet and
meandering my way through various dictionaries of quotations. It must have been someone like John Stuart
Mill or one of those absurdly gifted kids from a couple of hundred years ago
who could speak Greek at the age of three and had translated a Shakespeare play
into Hindi by the time he was seven.
That sort of thing.
My point was going to be that thinking about death, even the death of
those close to you is nothing out of the ordinary. Just another of the ‘What if?” questions that
float about in our consciousness or just below the level of active thought.
I was, I think, perfectly happy when I started writing the notes for
this poem, just one of those progressions in free writing that flow from
fugitive thought patterns. But when you
have written anything about a friend’s death, even if it is only a title ‘A
friend’s death’, and even if the friend is not actually dead, you feel as
though you need to explain yourself or at least give a little context.
My nails are brittle and they do tend to fray and break. When I was younger I would use my teeth as
nail clippers and try and make the edge smooth.
That was generally only achieved when the nail was flush with the skin
of the finger, the nail having been bitten down to the quick! I also sucked my thumb, to the extent that my
teeth became misaligned and a perfectly healthy incisor on the top right hand
side of my jaw was extracted to give room for my front teeth to settle and
align. Neither my nail biting nor thumb
sucking met with the approval of my parents, who eventually resorted to
smearing my fingers and thumb with proprietary noxious (though safe) liquid to
‘remind’ me by its sharp taste that I was doing something ‘wrong’. It didn’t work.
The prohibitions brought me to my absent parents; as they are ‘absent’
for most members of my specific generation now, perfectly naturally, you might
say, as time goes on. But still very
much absent.
It is the realization that, as one British friend said in a
self-contained conversation on the phone to me in Catalonia, “Are you coming
over to the UK soon? Oh, wait, there
isn’t anyone here left to die for whom you will have to go to the funeral!” And when I responded that there were friends
and cousins, she said, “Don’t say that.
That’s our generation!” Indeed it
is, hence the
wry smile from
empty generations now consumed
in the poem!
People deal with loss, and the concept of inevitable future loss, in
different ways. In the poem I look
towards the commemorative funeral service where one could be called upon to
speak and take the
metaphor
for memory that vivifies
and through recollection breathe live into
the dead person through personal anecdote.
With friends there are too many instances that come nowhere near
‘anecdote’ but that are as telling as the quotation that I could not find for
the start of this piece! The three lines
of italicised listing might seem incongruous and odd, but each element refers to
something tangible and ‘real’, an actual experience and, at the same time stands for so much more than the mere words themselves.
Friendship is everything: the good, the bad, the indifferent, the
stupid, the boring and every other adjective you can think of to sum up years
of knowing. But even, or possibly
because, it is impossible we must
make the effort, because lives (even if they are dead) matter.
I
try to express this in the final stanzas by using syntax: ands as conjunctions and links, and so’s as the results and consequences of joined lives together with
the necessity of saying, the use of words to make a memorial that is worth
preserving.
I’ve read and re-read the last six or seven lines and, while they
contain what I think I am trying to say, they still need work.
I am posting the 11th draft of this poem and I think I need
to let it rest for a while before I return and work on it again.
A friend’s death.
She is not dead.
And that’s not just a metaphor
for memory that vivifies:
she is
alive.
But on a bright-warm-cool autumnal day
while trying not to rip
an irritating, ragged nail,
thoughts’ dominoes began to tip and
tap, tap, tap, they fall against
remembered, bitten, finger ends
and teeth skew whiff
thumb sucked to wonkiness
until, at The Parental Eye,
they stop.
And being always The, not a:
an only child.
And now, and for the rest of nows,
an orphan too. And then,
a clack around to loss.
And a wry smile from
empty generations now consumed,
to here and us, and
how
if I were left alive
and called upon to speak,
I would remember her.
What memories might my
recall select?
Of
food, and toothpaste, things not said?
Of
friends, and swimming, curtains raised?
Of
Music, stolen cars and care?
And then, the thought,
if these, then what dictates, “not those”?
Because, I know, good stories
need a choice,
or else it’s one-for-one
and time must parallel
to show entirety.
Which is the only truth, of course.
But, no-one ever tells it all.
Moments pass by, day by day
and what we were goes with them too,
unless we stop and take a breath
and say,
“We are
alive, this time ago,
where lives are filled with ands and so’s;
so, trust the syntax as your link
that locks the here and then alike,
and let voiced statements make a space
where some shared truth may be believed.”
Thus I, remember, her.
