Telling the Truth

Beauty and Imminent Loss

Does beauty become more beautiful as the end draws near?

The last few years of my life have confronted me with a kind of isolation I never thought I would experience. Not isolation from books or music or what’s happening in my back yard.

Rather, this is about isolation from people. People I love; people I’ve never met in person; people with stories about themselves that I’ll likely never hear.

This morning I read through some of my poems. My health is pretty good these days, as long as I obey my doctors’ orders. My spirit, however, feels caught in a web of weariness and sadness. Some is about the state of our country and this planet. Much is about our rush here in the USA to make sure we’re on the ‘right’ or ‘left’ side of things.

I’m keenly aware of how lonely it is to be a people-person who can no longer galivant with friends and neighbors. If you’re not an introvert, you might think I’ve never in my life known what it means to galivant. That would be a huge error on your part, though I’ll admit to this: I had to learn to have a good time. It didn’t come easy.

So….this morning I read through the March poems I included in Without a Flight Plan. This one hit the mark. Not too cheery; not too morose.

Beneath trees of my childhood

Beneath trees
of my childhood
memories flood my eyes with
dreams and sorrows
packed within
the space of one life
gazing at tamed
and untamed beauty
underestimated
until this moment
of imminent loss

~~~

I pray this day brings peace, beauty, and buckets of kindness to enjoy, and to give away.

Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 11 March 2023
Photo found at etsy.com, John McManus Fine Art

9 Comments

February 28, 2023

In Our Woods, Sometimes A Rare Music | Mary Oliver

Here’s another lovely poem by Mary Oliver. It caught my eye and my spirit this morning. My comments follow.

Every spring
I hear the thrush singing
in the glowing woods
he is only passing through.
His voice is deep,
then he lifts it until it seems
to fall from the sky.
I am thrilled.

I am grateful.

Then, by the end of morning,
he’s gone, nothing but silence
out of the tree
where he rested for a night.
And this I find acceptable.
Not enough is a poor life.
But too much is, well, too much.
Imagine Verdi or Mahler
every day, all day.
It would exhaust anyone.

From A Thousand Mornings, Poems by Mary Oliver
Published by Penguin Books 2013
© 2012 by NW Orchard LLC

This morning I woke up to a songbird greeting the day. I also woke up to promises of rain and more frigid weather. Most importantly, I woke up. Alive and grateful for sleep, on the other side of last week’s highlight—getting a new pacemaker–Lucy II!

Mary Oliver’s poem reminds me that I don’t need an entire day of bird song, or even sunshine. Just being alive and able to hear one songbird is quite wonderful.

Last week I had Lucy (my pacemaker) upgraded to Lucy II. The hospital experience was distinctly less than I remembered. Imagine waking at 5am and getting to the hospital by 6:30am. We made it! That meant I would be home just after lunchtime. Except I wasn’t. Thanks to scheduling issues, I lay there all prepped, stomach empty since midnight, waiting with everyone else for the anesthesiologist to arrive. As it turned out, the fault wasn’t hers.

On the bright side, I haven’t been in such a lively, entertaining place since Covid lockdowns began. The entire surgery team was just there across the way, talking, laughing, obviously enjoying themselves while they too waited for the magic moment.

It came about 3 hours later. I’m glad to say I was out of it in a jiffy, had a good long nap before I woke up, and have been dealing with post-op instructions for nearly a week. I’m weary, prone to sleep anytime of the day or night, grateful for D and for Smudge, and slowly regaining my bearings.

As Mary Oliver points out, I don’t need a concert. I just need a bird song in the morning, a place to lie down and sleep as needed, a cat who loves to sleep with me, and D who makes a wonderful home nurse.

Thanks for stopping by.
Elouise

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 28 February 2023
Photo of wood thrush; found at Wikipedia.

21 Comments

February 20, 2023

Life with Lucy

Seven years ago, in early 2016, two events changed my life. First, I got a pacemaker to help with my heart issues. It went well. I was relieved and slightly ecstatic to have this new gadget that has helped keep me alive for the last seven years.

As some of you already know, Lucy (as in “I love Lucy“) is the name I gave my new pacemaker. She’s been with me through all kinds of ups and downs. That includes breaking my jaw in 2016, just two weeks after getting my pacemaker. There aren’t words to describe how devasted I felt. Especially because I’d just met Lucy and was on my way to a much-needed hair cut!

Suddenly I was living with wired jaws for about five weeks, followed by rehab exercises and drastic food changes. I’m not a party animal. I am, however, a people person. I know beyond a doubt that Lucy, along with D, Smudge, music, family members and friends got me through days and nights of despair and pain.

Two days from now I’m scheduled to get a replacement battery for Lucy. I’m told it’s nothing compared to getting the pacemaker. We shall see.

Do I still love Lucy? You bet I do! Right now I’m looking at a lovely Valentine’s Day card from a member of my church. The front of the card says “Love is patient and is kind.” Sometimes I wish I could blame my body for the pain it causes me. Thankfully, I’m learning to be patient and kind toward my various bodily aches and restrictions.

That’s my news for today! We’re in a mess here in the USA. All the more reason to be patient and kind with ourselves and with neighbors and strangers near and far. Right now.

Thanks for stopping by!
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 20 February 2023
photo found at wallpaperweb.org

18 Comments

February 11, 2023

Through the valley of the shadow of death

On 28 December 2005, I wrote a letter to my sister Diane. After more than nine years, ALS had done its worst. After an emergency visit to the hospital, she chose to return home to die. During the long wait, she was surrounded by family, friends, and caretakers. I’m grateful I could fly from Philadelphia to Houston once more before she died. I’ve reformatted most of my letter into poetic form. I still tear up when I read it.

Dear Diane,

I can’t stop thinking about the way Jesus’ birth was, for him,
a valley of the shadow of death—
leaving the most glorious home he’d ever had,
taking the final and first step all at the same time—
leaving heaven and stepping into earthly reality.
Did he have time to get ready?
I imagine him choosing this new form of life
without struggling against it
as God’s fullness of time approached for him.

I wonder how death is unfolding for you.

I pray you aren’t struggling to hang on,
and that your faith is growing as things keep falling relentlessly away.
I pray the steady sound of your breath
moving through the ventilator
will calm your mind and your heart.
I pray fear and anxiety will give way to
peace in the midst of pain, grief and deep sorrow.
I pray the Christmas tree in your room will remind you
of the tree of life—a small sign of Jesus Christ
who is with you and for you.
I pray the willingness of your beloved family members
to bid you farewell will be nurturing and sustaining—
A small sign of Jesus Christ who is with and for you.
I pray the loyalty, skill and tenderness of your caretakers
will comfort and cheer you on.
I pray the small dogs and the big human animals egging them on
will have you in stitches from time to time.
I pray your grandchildren will plant sloppy kisses on your cheeks,
and the adults, too!

I wonder—
Do you hear angel choirs singing from time to time?
I pray you’ll hear them more and more—singing over and beneath
your fears and the emotional pain of saying goodbye
to the wonderful friends and family members God has given you.
You have been a wondrous gift to us.
I’d like to think you were given just to me!
But I know you were given to an entire world of people
whose lives have touched yours and been touched by you.
If you can imagine us as an angel choir—
or at least a faint echo of that—
I pray it will bring a smile to your heart and a tear to your eye.
We’re singing God’s praises for giving us time on this earth with you—
God’s beloved daughter child.

With love, from the only oldest sister you’ll ever have,
Elouise♥

Thank you for stopping by. There’s so much heartbreak these days. I pray you’ll find peace and comfort as we watch and participate in these days of uncertainty and sorrow.

9 Comments

February 3, 2023

Green, Green is My Sister’s House | Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver’s poem has been on my mind for over a week. The photo above was taken in the front yard of our first home in Southern Georgia, near Savannah. That’s my small, petite sister next to me. Just hanging there, swinging back and forth, was exhilarating! Sister #3 was still a baby. Sister #4 hadn’t yet arrived. My brief comments follow.

Green, Green is My Sister’s House

Don’t you dare climb that tree
or even try, they said, or you will be
sent away to the hospital of the
very foolish, if not the other one.
And I suppose, considering my age,
it was fair advice.

But the tree is a sister to me, she
lives alone in a green cottage
high in the air and I know what
would happen, she’d clap her green hands,
she’d shake her green hair, she’d
welcome me. Truly

I try to be good but sometimes
a person just has to break out and
act like the wild and springy thing
one used to be. It’s impossible not
to remember wild and want it back. So

if someday you can’t find me you might
look into that tree or—of course
it’s possible—under it.

Mary Oliver, from A Thousand Mornings
Published in 2013 by Penguin Books, p. 49
© 2012 by NW Orchard LL.C.

I love this poem. Not because I want to climb the tree in the front yard of my childhood home, but because it understands and honors the agony of aging. It remembers how things used to be. The good, the bad, the ugly, and those unrepeatable moments of sheer joy. The dear old tree understands there’s nothing left but to lie down under the lovely tree I used to climb. Or beneath it, in the good earth.

Perhaps this is no more than a romantic twist about my aging heart. The heart that wants it all back again. Not just in fading moments or vague memories, but in reality. Like a beautiful statue that captures the glory, agony, and excitement of life with trees. Special trees. Those that remember us and welcome us home. Wild or weary. It doesn’t matter.

Praying this finds you thriving in your own way, making progress at your own pace, and learning to trust your Higher Power to carry you when you can’t walk so quickly anymore.
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 3 February 2023
Photo taken by my father in the early 1950s. The house looks out on the Vernon River. We’re hanging from an old mimosa tree.

9 Comments

January 23, 2023

Hurricane | Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver’s hurricane has been on my mind for the last few weeks. There’s so much we can’t predict or count on these days. Not only in nature, but in human experience and global disasters. It doesn’t matter how centered we may be, or how ‘safe’ we think we are. My comments follow.

Hurricane

It didn’t behave
like anything you had
ever imagined. The wind
tore at the trees, the rain
fell for days slant and hard.
The back of the hand
to everything. I watched
the trees bow and their leaves fall
and crawl back into the earth.
As though, that was that.
This was one hurricane
I lived through, the other one
was of a different sort, and
lasted longer. Then
I felt my own leaves giving up and
falling. The back of the hand to
everything. But listen now to what happened
to the actual trees;
toward the end of that summer they
pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.
It was the wrong season, yes,
but they couldn’t stop. They
looked like telephone poles and didn’t
care. And after the leaves came
blossoms. For some things
there are no wrong seasons.
Which is what I dream of for me.

Mary Oliver, from A Thousand Mornings
Published in 2013 by Penguin Books, pp. 21-22
© 2012 by NW Orchard LL.C.

I’m making it up, one day at a time. I never thought I would be faced with so many decisions. Some feasible; a precious few doable. The trees showed Mary the way. Don’t let the goblins scare you. And don’t give up.

Forget about right and wrong seasons of life. Grab what’s available now, and love with all your heart. Forget what others think. They don’t own your body or your soul. This too is a gift from above. Especially when things are bleak.

My health has an unpredictable mind of its own these days. Still, I want nothing more than the opportunity to be my real self before I die, regardless of impossibly “correct” rules or regulations. No fear. No anger toward myself or others. Just the right season to blossom before the next right season arrives.

Thank you for visiting and reading. I pray all is well with each of you, no matter what the weather.
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 23 January 2023
Photo found at pixabay.com.

15 Comments

December 30, 2022

Mary Oliver | Three Poems for 2023

How are we doing today? Not just as individuals, but as citizens in a world screaming with pain. Mary Oliver’s three short poems below, one after another, ask us to turn our attention inward. Whether we like it or not, we’re in this together. My brief comments follow.

The Morning Paper

Read one newspaper daily (the morning edition
is the best
for by evening you know that you at least
have lived through another day)
and let the disasters, the unbelievable
yet approved decisions,
soak in.

I don’t need to name the countries,
ours among them.

What keeps us from falling down, our faces
to the ground, ashamed, ashamed?

~~~

The Poet Compares Human Nature
To The Ocean From Which We Came

The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth,
it can lie down like silk breathing
or toss havoc shoreward; it can give

gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth
like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can
sweet-talk entirely. As I can too,

and so, no doubt, can you, and you.

~~~

On Traveling To Beautiful Places

Every day I’m still looking for God
and I’m still finding him everywhere,
in the dust, in the flowerbeds.
Certainly in the oceans,
in the islands that lay in the distance
continents of ice, countries of sand
each with its own set of creatures
and God, by whatever name.
How perfect to be aboard a ship with
maybe a hundred years still in my pocket.
But it’s late, for all of us,
and in truth the only ship there is
is the ship we are all on
burning the world as we go.

~~~

Published by Penguin Books in A Thousand Mornings/Mary Oliver, pp. 65-69
Copyright © 2012 by NW Orchard LL.C

I love poems about beauty and truth. I’m not sure, however, how to mix beauty and truth when we seem to be falling apart. Ignoring what can’t be ignored. Making ‘exceptions’ for those who seem to hold the most power of any kind.

Mary Oliver invites and even dares us to see the world as it is. Not the world as we wish it were, or the world we think we can ignore. She also invites us to repent. To turn around. To see and live whatever truth we can with at least one other person. One day, one problem, one fleeting moment at a time, regardless of what others may think about us.

Praying we’ll find renewed life with each other in the coming year, regardless of our country, religion, politics, gender, or age. And . . . I wish each of you a truly happy new year in which you find courage you never thought possible.
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 30 December 2022
Photo found at phys.org/news/2022-23

9 Comments

December 19, 2022

winter then and now

Looking back just 1 1/2 years ago, I never would have guessed I would be so housebound, or that this would become my new normal.

Days dwindle down quickly, especially in winter. First light turns into fading light. The list of things I can reasonably accomplish grows shorter by the day. However, the amount of time I think I need to get through each day grows larger. For example: food prep and cooking, exercises, walking, doing my laundry, and endless weeding out of papers and other items I no longer need.

Still, I’m more as ease with my aging body than I was just one month ago. Today it’s way too cold to walk with D in the afternoon. Besides, there’s no way I can keep up with him. Our attic (remember the renovations?) has been my home away from home on most days. It’s quiet, with windows at each end, and plenty of space to get moving, or go through my exercises.

I cry more than I did a year ago. I’ve always been a weeper. However, it hasn’t been easy to weep at will when I feel pain or am discouraged. Yet if I don’t, it won’t help me accept present realities. In addition, though I’m content to post only as I’m able, I’m not thrilled with the constraints I now have.

Here’s an early haiku and poem about ‘frozen grief’. It seems I’m still learning to deal with this. Not just grief from my childhood, but the grief I’ve experienced at the hands, mouths and attitudes of people who wanted to change or take advantage of me.

winter sun
6 February 2014

winter sun pierces
my paralyzed heart waking
frozen grief at will

***

Buried deep, forgotten
Denied, minimized, ignored
Silenced, unexamined

Held at bay
‘It wasn’t that bad’
‘Others had it worse’

Ashamed of my own story
Just another privileged woman
Who doesn’t get it

Afraid to shine a light
On darkness that seems
To have overpowered me

You mean you’re this old and
You still haven’t gotten over it
Beyond it, done already?

Normal
We want normal
How much longer will this take?

Winter sun does its work
In the fullness of God’s time
Not one moment sooner

Thanks for stopping by today. Or tomorrow…
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 19 December 2022
Photo found at pinterest.com
Attic photos taken by DFraser and me in 2018

10 Comments

December 3, 2022

This weariness of mine | George MacDonald

For several months I’ve been up, down, and all over the place trying to figure out who I am now, and why I feel so weary. To things that fell apart years ago, new things arrive unannounced, no matter how long or short the distance may be from here to the end of life as I’ve known it.

On January 1 of this year I began reading one of George MacDonald’s sonnets each day. It’s my 3rd or 4th time going through them. This time, however, I’m finally beginning to hear MacDonald as he was when he wrote them. He was living through a slow, painful death following many years of chronic tuberculosis, the loss of five of his children (4 to tuberculosis), and ongoing debates with church officials who didn’t find his brand of Christianity fully acceptable.

My life has been a lark compared to his. Yet even as I write this I know it’s not the truth. My life has NOT been a lark. I have often not been fully accepted as the person I am, beginning with my upbringing and continuing through my adult years. I must also say I wouldn’t have made it without unnumbered friends and strangers along the way.

These days, weariness is a constant companion. Some of it because of new and old health issues; other pieces because of what it has cost, and still costs me to be the woman I am. I’m often tempted to feel sorry for myself, or angry because of what I inherited the day I was born.

This sonnet, however, isn’t about the past. It’s about the present and the future. It’s about the wonderful gift of accepting weariness as a sign that I’ve done what I could do. Like fruit past ripe, I too am waiting to drop wearily into the good earth. Finally at rest.

Here’s the sonnet I didn’t understand until today.

3 December, from George MacDonald’s The Book of Strife in the Form of the Diary of an Old Soul

This weariness of mine, may it not come
From something that doth need no setting right?
Shall fruit be blamed if it hang wearily
A day before it perfected drop plumb
To the sad earth from off its nursing tree?
Ripeness must always come with loss of might.
The weary evening fall before the resting night.

© 1994 Augsburg Fortress, page 120

Thanks for reading and listening. I couldn’t ask for a better audience.
Elouise♥

10 Comments

November 20, 2022

from the podium

I seem to have gained a year overnight. Birthday #79! Here’s one of my oldest poems, first posted in March 2014. I didn’t write it for my birthday, but today it’s just right! I pray your day is filled with gratitude, thanksgiving, and hope for our weary world. After all, the wrens and sparrows haven’t stopped singing. So why should we?

from the podium
Beethoven in floral garb
conducts ode to joy

* * *

Things that gladden and soften me,
making me deeply happy and grateful to be alive:

the carolina wren and white-throated sparrow
singing outside my window at dawn

opening notes of orchestral music
warming my heart, releasing tears, relaxing my body

walking in our neighborhood at sunset
as fading light catches the tiptop of trees and steeples

being with our family for sit-down meals
to celebrate birthdays and each other

the sound of waves breaking rhythmically
on sandy beaches and rocky shores

the smell of damp pine needles on the ground
following a rainstorm in the deep South

unexpected moments of deep grief
for Mother and for Sister #3

playing the piano for no one but myself,
weeping for the beauty and comfort of music

the smile in David’s eyes
when I walk into the room

* * *

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 18 March 2014, lightly edited and reposted 20 November 2022
Photo credit: DAFraser
Longwood Gardens Orchid House Display

25 Comments

Like it? Pass it on!

Like this:

Like it? Pass it on!

Like this:

Like it? Pass it on!

Like this:

Like it? Pass it on!

Like this:

Like it? Pass it on!

Like this:

Like it? Pass it on!

Like this:

Like it? Pass it on!

Like this:

Like it? Pass it on!

Like this:

Like it? Pass it on!

Like this:

Like it? Pass it on!

Like this: