This week, it seems so soon again, I was saddened by the death of an old friend who often filled my life with laughter and good advice. I held back tears.
One might have thought that as time passes the heart might harden as arteries harden and the sense of loss may grow less acute as the five familiar senses most certainly tend to do. But it is not so. Eyes grow dull with age but griefs do not grow dull. And, naturally, as one gets old and then older still, the occasions for feeling grief multiply. The passage of time between sadness brought on by losing close family or beloved friends now quickens almost by the week.
There is the poem, The Trestle by Raymond Carver, which I have known for years and it never fails to move me. Carver was an American poet and short story writer who died at the age of 49 from cancer. He wrote many of his best poems and stories when he knew he was dying. This poem is about his father and whenever I read it I remember my own wise and gentle father who meant so much to me. He died in 1995 but the grief I felt then still comes back.
The Trestle
I went to bed last night thinking about my dad.
About that little river we used to fish – Butte Creek –
near Lake Almanor. Water lulled me to sleep………
Fir trees stood on both sides of the meadows. And I was there.
a kid sitting on a timber trestle, looking down,
Watching my dad drink from his cupped hands.
Then he said, “This water’s so good.
I wish I could give my mother some of this water.”
My dad still loved her, though she was dead
and he’d been away from her for a long time.
He had to wait some more years
until he could go where she was. But he loved
this country where he found himself. The West.
For thirty years it had him around the heart,
and then it let them go. He went to sleep one night
in a town in northern California
and didn’t wake up. What could be simpler?
I wish my own life, and death, could be so simple.
So that when I woke on a fine morning like this,
after being somewhere I wanted to be all night,
somewhere important, I could move most naturally
and without thinking about it, to my desk.
Say I did that, in the simple way I’ve described
From bed to desk back to childhood.
From there it’s not so far to the trestle.
And from the trestle I could look down
and see my dad when I needed to see him.
My dad drinking that cold water. My sweet father,
The river, its meadows, and firs, and the trestle.
That. Where I once stood.
I meditate on grief – as we must all do. But grief is not depression nor dejection nor despair. One does not cease to love life every hour. Grief, which is inevitable, is not debilitating. Tears do not blind one’s eyes, they make them gleam. Grief is a spur to remembering what it is to be alive and capable of treasuring the rich gifts of the world. Every day that dawns is still worth a poem. The memories of those we have lost merge with the lives and joys of those who still surround us with so much promise. The delight our grandchildren, Jacob and Zoey, take in life daily puts grief in the perspective in which we must always place it.