Etched in Stone

Barry Lopez writes in an article about artist Rick Bartow, "It is legitimate to call the artist a carrier, a runner. He or she brings forward a story known from an earlier time. He changes nothing, adds nothing, but by the medicine he has been given, by his gift, he inflects the story."

She struggles with what to write on the sympathy card to the parents of dying twins. No Hallmark sentiment could possibly suffice. She waits for words, maybe too long, until one morning the tiny infant poem comes to her:
"Too rare
for anywhere
but their
ancient Celtic home."
She knows these girls from an earlier time, knows their Irish heritage, and knows this is all she should say. They aren't her words, really, but her responsibility to relay, her medicine, her simple gift to give. On April 12th, 2006 Eleanor Peck Hamilton and Rowan Quinn Hamilton return home (as their father writes). The memorial service is held on April 15th, the day between Good (God) Friday and Easter. Her friend brings her the program for the service. Those words, that just came to her so clearly, were on the front of the program. She is told that these will be the words that will go on the twins' grave marker; etched in stone. She's told by another friend that it isn't called a head stone or tombstone anymore (some aren't even stone anymore). What is she to understand of this? She is stunned.

"He (the artist) ensures that in his time it (the medicine) will lodge unforgettably in the memory of the listener."

Later, the mother writes a thank you note, "When I first read your beautiful poem I wept and thought how agonizingly apt it was for my beautiful elfin children...my changelings, my babies. You have given us the most beautiful fitting and romantic epitaph and I am grateful from the bottom of my heart." The medicine worked, so simply, with only the effort of listening to the spirit and passing it on.

"An artist arranges his life to take care of his medicine. He seeks out the medicine people, the doctors who can help him see (a bear, a tree, his father's brother)."

She has sought to arrange her life to honor the gift she was given, leaving her secure day job, committing to daily meditation and an open heart. Practice, practice, practice. But when the money ran out, she got scared, took another day job, and has little energy left to listen and record. She sees a fox on a spring ski adventure and knows the fox has something to tell her: feminine magic of camouflage, shapeshifting mistress of the between times, the thin places as they call it in Celtic Christianity. She knows the fox could jolt her awake into a "flash of pure epiphany...a diamond light," and yet she puts on her sunglasses and goes back to her job until tragedy strikes and she has no choice but to be still and listen. What is she to understand of this? The importance of her medicine, the need, the purity and aptness of it all. Does she say? Thank you? You're welcome? Does she tell anyone else about these words etched in stone? What does she feel? Pride? Humility? Embarrassment? Gratitude? Loving relief? Shock and awe, and all? She doesn't know. Does she just get on with her life until the next time? Perhaps she learns more from the twins' death then from their living. Perhaps her fear and need for security is a wicked distraction.

"He reminds himself it is not the medicine person who is great. It's that he or she knows how to participate more stongly in the mystery to which the artist has devoted himself. The artist needs guidance to reveal what happens when, for that brief period, he goes inside, when he steps further into life than most of us can manage. He wants to make as few mistakes as possible with his medicine."

The lesson in death, there really isn't that much time. Don't waste it on what she thinks others expect of her. Risk. Go deep. Abide in the 'tween spaces where so few wish to go alone. Walk the thin places, every time she is called, with a humble heart, grateful she has been given this gift~a gift no lesser or greater than anyone else's, but belonging uniquely to her. Let the words be etched in stone, words the twins gave her to comfort their grieving family. If she lives the good medicine, devoted, she will have lived well.

More Death. Damn it.

"It's the little things that get to me," Ruth sighed as her grieving body released oh so slightly into my embrace. We don't know each other very well, but death is a commonality that connects us all. I thought Ruth should have a witness to the little things in her marriage that she misses now that Greg is gone. "Like what?" I asked. "Every morning he would greet me with, 'So nice to see you today. Would you like some tea?' and I miss having someone being so glad to see me every single day for all those years." Tears brimmed at her lower lids, but never fell. "I appreciate all the meals you all bring. I'm not usually like this, I mean, I have food in the cabinets and the freezer, but something all made up, made with love..." More tears waiting on the edge. "You're allowed to need. That's why we are in community," I assure her. This Sunday she adandones her lone spot in church and sits in Sherry and DeAnn's pew, leaning in, just ever so slightly.

Trillium

Trillium

Trinity of forest floors, remind me
as I cling, in this spring of uncertainty,
my desire to claim, possess as mine,
heightened by daily news and little sign
of peace. I seek your lesson, wood lily ~

Rife and wild, you are ever meant to be
white wake robin, shaded, yes. Sheltered, but free
from harsh winds and warring lives entwined
trinity of forest floors, remind me ~

If I pluck violet-veined petals, nestled in ivy,
to vase as mine, for seven years I will not see
your flower, in patches of promise, divine
golden centers of hope in precarious times.
Behold, but not hold any blossom too tightly.
Trinity of forest floors, remind me.

Spelling Errors

Some typos and spelling errors I really appreciate. A student wrote about "realationships." I like it. I want it ~ a real relationship, not a flirtation that goes nowhere, an affair lacking commitment, an emotionally superficial connection. I'm ready for the real thing in real time, the good, the bad, the ugly, the exquisitely real.

A Foundation

Monday, the day after Easter, we broke ground for our Grace Academy cob bench (made from clay, sand, and straw). The middle school students designed the bench with clay models. The expectation was that the bench would artistically represent the history of the neighborhood, the untold stories and unsung heroes of Sullivan's Gulch. It needed to fish-tail around to accommodate two views, one of their public art mural and one of the future intersection project on the opposite corner. Finally, we asked the students to consider representing our interdependence of humanity, the confluence of community, of the past and our future dreams. They designed a two tier, semi-circle bench inlaid with handmade tiles representing the unsung heroes. A double spiral column (like the double helix of our DNA) supports a living roof. The ground breaking ceremony included a wish or hope from each student as s/he placed a rock around the periphery. "I hope people like our bench." "I wish this bench will draw the community together." "I hope we are remembered." We were all handed an egg (filled with confetti) to crack on our heads in celebration. Brightly colored paper and egg shells scattered on the cold ground. Renewal. Spring. New life. Promise of Easter scattered on the cold ground. As the director, I made the first dig into the turf. I need a new foundation.

The next day, with a foot deep hole in the ground, it was time to put down the urbanite foundation. I took the noon shift, pleased to move with the pace of stone, slowly, deliberating on the puzzle before us. Each randomly cut piece needed to fit evenly with the others...no rocking, precarious base ~ a perpetual, underlying support that integrated with the earth and offered us all a resting place. I need a resting place. Tuesday was sunny and warm. Sweat dripped from my forehead and ran down my face like salty tears. I took time to examine each empty spot, each possible piece of urbanite. I took my time placing each stone as if the success of our entire future was dependent on my choice. A symbolic circle of stone, I stood inside. I stood outside. We poured sand between the three layers of stone...filling the crevices with desert. I have wheelbarrow level bruises on my thighs from carting urbanite to the site ~ laying the stone, not rolling it away. A sturdy foundation. Starting over. In the beginning. A new song.

Rebirth, Resurrection, Reincarnation: What's the Dif?

Three days after the twin's death, Easter. I can't help but anticipate a resurrection. I never believed there would be a second coming of Christ as foretold in the hyperbolic predictions of Revelations...too mythological for my reality. Yet, humans use myth to explain the inexplicable and right about now I could really use a viable explanation for the death of Eleanor and Quinn. This Good Friday we, in our faith community, all wrestle on God's Friday, this soggy gray northwest day as the heavens rain down on us in torrents of tears (speaking of mythological hyperbole), we all wrestle with the grim reality of mortality and the ineffable hope of resurrection.

One of my students responded to an essay question on whether or not justice was one-sided or depended on everyone agreeing with his argument that our concept of justice is based on our belief in an afterlife. His hypothesis was that those who believed in an afterlife are less concerned about mortality and less caught up in seeking justice for this lifetime...hmmm? In contrast then wouldn't the exisistentialists be more concerned with justice in the here and now because their won't be a judgment day, an opportunity for salvation in an afterlife? What about the first 1000 years of Christianity where the belief was that we're all simply dead, right now, until the second coming? What about the rapture rage? What about the belief that you live in judgment of your deeds in this life in order to be saved in the next? Obviously the debate over judgment, mortality, and the afterlife is beyond the scope of an SAT Review Essay, but clearly, our decisions about how we choose to live in this lifetime are based on our beliefs about what's next, if anything, and what part does judgment (our own, societies, God's or the gods and goddesses) play along the Way.

Says the Reverend Susan Leo, "Good Friday is the day we can really know that God is with us when our lives are too hard to bear. Good Friday is the day that we lose everything, so that on Easter morning, we can receive God's gift of everything. Be not afraid. It's real life."

I believe I am supposed to find new life every day, every day a rebirth, a resurrection. I don't expect an empty tomb drama each day, a glowing visage packed with metaphor for how I should live my life. That's been done. I'm not going to get anymore signs until I believe the ones that are already here and have come before. Reincarnation is the reality, resurrection, the hope, and rebirth the promise of forgiveness if we trust and believe that our lives (our tombs of living) are simultaneously empty and full. Death and renewal, an unavoidable cycle occurring every second of every day. That's real life.

1:30 a.m.

Buddy the cat and I step out on the kitchen deck, looking for the cold, post mid-night, full moon. That moon, infamous 2006 Passover moon, is muted by northwest clouds and shaggy birch tree branches. The night is too cold for me. I don't understand life. I don't understand death,
and I cannot sleep.

Walking into the Future (Stafford Reports Back)

Of course there is more room to roam if you roam alone.
(We have reached this place.)

Risk walking in your own footsteps (If there is trust,
we make no mistakes.)

What is the secret for walking in the new?
(Our feet are trying to remember. Stay out of their way.)

-Wendy (2003)

Once, with tribute to Angela Pozzi

Once tossed overboard I sea things:

one marooned
yet now festooned
immersed in a watery escape

one sunken soul
risen through sea plumes
and cadmium rooms

I sea things
in the tiny tide pools
of each of our days

Death on My Mind

Every Wednesday morning the garbage truck rumbles by on NE 54th Street with such magnitude that the vibrations rattle the ceramic art work on the SW wall of my bedroom, hundreds of yards away, and wakes me up. The art work is an Annie Quigley original ceramic plate purchased for me by my first partner, Sandy Frascati, who died of cancer two summers ago. From now, to 23 years ago every Wed. morning. From garbage to artwork, every Wed. morning. The rippling vibration of our lives. From Quigley to Frascati to now. "We cannot know the impact of our presence." (Do I need to quote myself from my own poetry?)

I am, of course, reminded of the ripples of a stone's throw, the impact of the life and death of others on the life and death of me. The ripple of the twin's lives on mine with the forever understanding that we are loved just for being. Quinn and Eleanor showed me that in two weeks, that which I couldn't learn in 45 years. The ripple of Sandy's life and death on me, my first love, estranged for 20 years and still I felt her impending death one year before I got the word. Was it the Quigley? I have a matching Annie Quigley lamp base, light for reading (which Sandy loved to do)...both pieces are a summer sky blue glaze, dull with heat ~ Salt Lake City, 1980's lesbian lavender and muted pink marble stripes are neatly layered in diagonals half-way across the diameter. What I like most about the design is the quarter inch slash through the tidy geometry, destroying the order of the piece, saying, "Just when you think you have it all figured out. Guess what? You don't!"

This ceramic plate rattles against my convent white bedroom wall every Wednesday morning even though I can't remember why I loved Sandy. Even though I never knew Annie Quigley, and don't know if she is dead, too. So much has passed in 23 years, Sandy, Sweetpea, loves lost, careers, Eleanor, Quinn, families of choice, lost and still I wake, every Wednesday morning, to the rattle of the Quigley plate.

Passing Over on Passover

Eleanor and Quinn Hamilton, with metaphorical irony, passed away today, passed over this afternoon, April 12th, 2006, the eve of the first day of Passover. Pesach is a holiday of gratitude and thanksgiving. How can it be? This is the time to donate to the poor, to invite guests to share in celebration. Tonight, our grieving community all sit in our separate houses under the same full moon and indigo twilight, celebrating the same loss of two short lives. How can it be? Legend is that Elijah the Prophet dresses like a beggar to see if people will invite him in for dinner this night and show they are really ready for the coming of the Messiah.

Some of us sit around a Seder table, wondering why, trying to explain death to our children. Some of us sit miles away, candles lit in reverence, waiting for Friday when we will fly home to be with family and funerals. Some of us sit Shiva, of sorts, with the mother, the father, the brother. Some of us spend the night wrapped in a lover's arms, grateful for a shoulder to absorb our tears. Some of us sit alone. Me, I sit outside in the cool quiet night, with a bottle of Barefoot Cellars Premium Red Wine (one glass for Elijah) and a carton of Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream, not knowing how to celebrate, how to keep the angel of death away from me.

We celebrate this holiday to commemorate the freeing of the Jews from bondage in Egypt. Sacrifice a lamb, a sweet, innocent, baby lamb, and dot the blood over the doors of Jewish homes. The angel of death will pass over. "This night is different from all other nights because once we were slaves," withstanding bitterness, sweetened by the hope of freedom. Tonight we wonder about hope. How can it be? Angels of death. Twin angels with brief lives. Bitterness touches my tongue and dulls the moon. "Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, Who has kept us alive and well so that we can celebrate this special time." This night of loss...lives short lived. I raise my glass, silhouetted in moonlight, no tears, no time. How can it be? Are we ready now for the coming of the Messiah? Are we empty enough now for our salvation?

Taking a Life

My co-worker called in sick today because last night she had to put her dog to sleep, lay him down, euthanize him is actually what she said. I was reminded of 2001 when I had to put my toy poodle Sweetpea to sleep. I never considered myself a pet person, but Sweetpea, adopted from doggy foster-care, had apparently grown on me without me knowing it. Sweetpea was a five pound, apricot-white toy poddle (probably a mix, but being adopted, we didn't know her full heritage; we didn't even know her full age). Barb and I bought Sweetpea from a vet when we first moved to the northwest. Barb was missing her little dog Honeybee. At the separation of our an 8-year domestic partnership, Barb got Sweetpea first (I felt guilty). But then custody arrangements shifted as my depression sunk in and Barb lovingly noticed I would be better off with Sweetpea.) She said Sweetpea was really always my dog. I will always love them both for that.

In August 2001 Sweetpea collapsed in my backyard, just dropped over while doing her morning sniff and dump routine. I raced up the steps to lift her shivering body from the over grown late summer grass spot. I didn't know what to do. Vets? Take her to a vet. The closest was Hazel Dell vets. They put her in an oxygen tent and recommended she be transferred to St. Francis, of course, St. Francis; in a past life I had loved his lover Sister Claire. On September 11, 2001 (yes, really, that was the date), I dropped Sweetpea off at my friend David's house to take her to the doggy cardiologist while I taught middle school. I knocked on David's door and he said, "Have you seen the news?" I hadn't. Twin towers, terrorists?, planes, Sweetpea sick, middle school students waiting. I dropped off Sweetpea and returned to my first period class of students, stunned by national disaster. Be proactive. Give them control of an uncontrollable situation. Answer questions. I don't know, but we are all here. My mother knows people in New York. Me too. Pennsylvania, my home state. My dog is dying. We, students and me, brainstormed a Peace Garden that graces Vancouver School of Arts and Academics today.

That afternoon I picked up Sweetpea with the bad news that she had congenital heart failure and the medication would most likely cause kidney failure. That night we watched the news reports, me and my dying dog, alone, on 9/11, and I decided I would never again be without family or community during a disaster.

In October of that year I had to realize that I was keeping Sweetpea alive for me and she would rather be in doggy haven (can't quite grasp the concept of heaven outside of the vacation spas I read about in Sunset Magazine). So I photographed her on my bed with the lace white bedspread and rose petals scattered as I used to do each night I was inseminated. New life. Death. New life. My Sweetpea.

The next day I called my ex-partner to say it was time and I wanted her with me. I took Sweetpea over to David's house again for a blessing (his wife used to have healing powers for me). Then I wrapped her in her favorite towel and took her to St. Francis. Barb and I held her while Barb's new partner waited in the waiting area. One shot. Less than 3 seconds and her tongue lagged in her dropped jaw and she was gone. We wept, shocked at the brevity.

I went home alone, packed Sweetpea's collars and bed for the colleague with small dogs, cleaned the kitchen floor (her domain) twice, cried, cried some more and curled up in my bed missing her furry white heart beat on my pillow above my head. How could I take this life? How could I not? Excruitiating agony.

My colleague today thanked me for giving her a day off. Of course. A death is death. I am outraged that Eleanor and Quinn's dad was confronted with an ideological challenge in the midst of deciding if his girls should be removed from the ventilator or not. Those people had no right to judge. They had no reference to know. I don't know what I would do in the light of the twins. I didn't know what I would do with Sweetpea.

The ICU nurse for the twins called Eleanor "Sweetpea." I sobbed even more, remembering how hard it is to wonder if you are taking a life.

The Hunt

I've been exploring internet dating services in the last year (look at me, a blogger and an internet dater). I haven't had much luck meeting anyone, but I am getting to know myself through the process, my likes and dislikes, what I can tolerate, what is a road to disaster. Yesterday I received a return "smile" from a woman who described one of her hobbies as hunting. Well, I only have one female friend who enjoys hunting. What do I think about that?

I am not a hunter, although I did have to kill and butcher one of my 4-H projects when I was a kid growing up in rural Pennsylvania. Snoopy and Red Baron were two white ducks that I raised from chickdom. They spent most of their days floating on our family pond when we weren't swimming in it. Somehow the butchering part of the 4-H project was underplayed. When we raised bees, we didn't bother about the dead bees surrounding the dripping honey. Dead-heading marigolds in my first garden didn't phase me. No creatures died in the process of sewing my first apron or baking my first apple pie. The rocks and minerals 4-H project, well I wasn't faced with ending a life in the collection of Fool's Gold either. And the bunny rabbit project wasn't on the books until the following year.

Living in the country, I wasn't a stranger to animal death. The "pet" squirrel in the shoe box didn't last a day. Blue robin eggs in the incubator never made it past the first few beak pecks through the shell, and there was always a Black Angus calf each year that didn't survive. I'm sure by the time Snoopy and Red Baron came on the scene I had lost at least one cat to a hysterectomy operation, several goldfish to the porcelain burial grounds, and my pet black mouse, Andy Williams, who died of a concussion from hitting his head too many times on the Time/Life Big Books I had covering his aquarium (in lieu of wire meshing, which for some reason we couldn't afford, at least that is how I remember it).

An animal becomes a pet when you name and care for it. I named and cared for Snoopy and Red Baron (sort-of, although I suspect my father did most of the work because I didn't like to get dirty). Perhaps that was my first mistake. Colonel MacFarland, the local farmer/rancher never named his Black Angus cows, despite their soft brown eyes and long lashes. They were raised to be beef for the table, like Snoopy and Red Baron were ultimately raised to be Thanksgiving dinner that year. Nobody raises a pet to be butchered, do they? There was obviously some miscommunication.

The process for preparing S&RB for Thanksgiving didn't initially involve a gun. My brother Rod and I (we were partners in this project) were supposed to capture the ducks and hold their heads on the cutting block and do the deed. Well, my parents realized Rod and I were not going to be able to accomplish this dirty deed, so they brought over a neighboring farmer with his gun. We were expected to watch though ~ life on the farm and all. He started with my duck, Snoopy, bringing the hatchet down clear and clean along the duck's neck. What shocked both Rod and me was that ducks don't need their heads to keep waddling about the yard and tripping into the stream that led to their swimming hole. I won't present the details, we've all read those children's farm stories, but suffice it to say, my horror stunned me motionless and sent my brother racing and screaming into the woods unable to witness the same cruel end to his pet duck. The neighbor farmer finally brought the inertia of my duck to an end with one shot from his rifle and I hated guns ever since.

So could I date a woman who hunts? I emailed her back and said I hate guns and can't imagine killing anything with skin (although I do eat meat, I won't buy a whole chicken or turkey or duck...somebody else has to prepare the meat). She emailed back that she hunts with a bow. So now what? Is that okay?

Growing up in rural PA, the first day of hunting season was a day off school. We couldn't play in the woods that first day and throughout the season we had to wear a lot of orange. Nobody in my family hunted and my mother was renowned among hunters who wandered mistakenly on to our property and were startled by her screeching angrily, hanging out the fourth floor farmhouse window. "Private property. Children playing here. Get out." She eventually had quite a reputation, "Stay away from the woman at Twin Spruce Hollow on North Buck Road." I think she was secretly proud of the eccentric rep. she'd built around the countryside.

We four kids had one close encounter with a gun when we were caught building hay bale forts in Col. MacFarland's barn. He actually threatened to shoot us, innocent (albeit smart mouthed) children who hadn't done anything but rearrange his hay.

I don't like guns, I am a pacifist, I won't even protest AGAINST war because the word 'against' holds an element of conflict. I march for peace instead. But bow and arrows? I took archery in PE class. I know the skill it takes, there's something elegant and more egalitarian about hunting with a bow. If this woman hunts only for her own food and not for the testosterone-filled pleasure of killing, then I could admire her for her self-sufficiency. Maybe she has an entire set of ethics surrounding the hunt that I could actually understand.

I emailed her back. I don't want to generalize or stereotype, and besides, I started the hunt by sending her the first "smile."

The Trouble With Blogging

Poem: "The Silver Swan" by Anonymous. Public Domain.

The Silver Swan

The silver swan, who living had no note,
When death approached unlocked her silent throat,
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sung her first and last, and sung no more:
Farewell all joys, O death come close mine eyes,
More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.


Yesterday I finally posted some thoughts after avoiding this blog for several weeks. My friend Donna had encouraged me to set up this blog; other friends rallied with support saying, "If anyone should have a wider audience for her writing it should be you." I've taught writing for almost 10 years now. I know the value of journaling, and I used to be quite disciplined, every morning reading, writing, producing at least one poem a week. Lately I have a litany of excuses not to maintain that discipline: work, too tired, depressed, work, somebody already said it better, gotta make money and I don't make money writing, don't have time to edit, this writing is not worthy of publication (even in a blog setting where thousands, perhaps millions of people spew their inner, under-edited thoughts into the atmosphere, work (which is not teaching writing anymore), haven't seen this episode of CSI, too tired, depressed...is it a litany if the list is redundant? Mostly, though, my resistance is that I don't want to sound like a fool to a wider audience. Like the silver swan, like Emily Dickinson, I really only want to be heard upon death. I don't want to be revealed for the fallible human being that I am. I remember a friend of mine telling me she used to think her father was brilliant because he never said anything to counter that. Problem is, he never said anything at all, so she could not know the truth of his brilliance until old age let his tongue slip and she realized how dull and disappointing he was in comparison to her perception of him.

Yesterday I ended my blog with a question...is that what God meant by Easter? Well this morning, in my slow wake, when I'm thinking about what I could blog, but probably won't, I'm already editing yesterday's blurt of emotion and innocent questions with my overthinking, obsessive mind. God didn't mean anything by Easter, God didn't design Easter. God flipped the switch that threw into action the cycle of birth and death and rebirth and death...the cycle of nature. Human beings fabricated Easter to find an explanation for this cruel and unfair reality that people die, an appeasement toward our mortality.

I am mortal, the mazy musings of my mind are feeble in the wake of the oceanic scheme of things. But if the twins can live for only two weeks with barely enough gray matter to keep their vital organs functioning, and yet are equistitely, radically, unconditionally loved through their short, seemingly unproductive lives... Well then, the least I can do is use what gray matter I have to blurt out my understanding that yes, Eleanor and Quinn's life and death and love generated through their fragile sleeping selves, Jesus' life and death and love, my life and death and resurrection every day, the Justification by Grace, by mercy, by unconditional love is God's point...IS what Easter means. The point is not to wait until death to unlock my throat for a Swan Song, but to release my love song, all my notes, into the breathing atmosphere of the living, into now because I am mortal, I am fallible, and I am loved and valued for who I am. Is that your point, God?

I will continue to spell check and read over my blogs because I care about what I put out there, but I won't let that care (or pride) keep me so silent.

Palm Sunday

The ICU nurse shows me how to flex my arm and support it with a pillow so that Eleanor’s infant head can rest in the crook of my elbow.
Crook, bend, cheat.
We’ve all been cheated, incomprehensibly.
The unfathomable loss of not one, but two new lives.

Nurse Diane places Eleanor in the fold of my left arm and I reach with my right hand between the feeding tube and the breathing tubes and all these other silent wires hooked like a bomb to this six-pound listless body. (Harmless, except to herself.)
Touch her heart. Still beating. The suck of oxygen from a metal box, soft as a purr, a sleeping baby’s puff. She is just sleeping, still alive, rocking next to identical twin sister Quinn. Donna holds Quinn ~ a first that neither of us ever expected on our list of firsts.

Unintelligible
that only ten days ago, a flushed mama admired not one, but two dimpled chins, one of the unavoidable family traits. The other one hidden, until now.
The dimple, barely visible beneath the tape and brace that holds the tubes that holds the sisters to this world. Donna sniffles, red-faced. “This is so unreal, so unfair, I’m so angry.” I wipe my tears before they drip on Eleanor’s easily startled cheek.

Palm Sunday.
I palm Eleanor’s powder soft head, a brush of reddish brown hair, blonde eyebrows gently arch above eye slits. Eleanor opened her eyes for a moment, once, decades ago. They have a picture that plays over and over on Dad’s computer. Quinn never opened her eyes. They would probably be rich, warm, and aqueous like her mother’s, with epic lashes like Dad’s, lengthened today by his tears.
I wish my hand on her head would make all the difference, would change the course of events, would heal in miracle fashion on this Palm Sunday. But the miracle already occurred, the birth, and besides, it’s not about miracles anymore, just life and death, this Holy Week, there is only life and death.

Incomprehensible. Why?

My pinkie, incapable of being grasped by Eleanor.
This moment, incapable of being understood, this infant, twitching in the fold of my arm, this child, celebrated and anticipated, will never read the “Bobbsey Twin” books I gave her from my childhood collection.

Her mother leaves the ICU room to arrange for the donation of corneas and heart valves. Dad had hoped they could give even more. No end to the sadness.
Big brother Greer has gone home, tired and confused (at 2 and1/2 years old) by this inconceivable conception. If his sisters come home at all, they won’t stay long and he won’t be able to play with them in the new playroom with the checker-squared rubber mat and nursing couch generously angled to be the first thing you see when you walk in the room. Angles, Angels. I don’t understand.

Palm Sunday, rocking chairs, without a squeak, hooked to wires like some futuristic matriarch, hold me and Eleanor and Donna and Quinn. Greer crayoned a picture for each of them that hangs above their tiny beds, labeled with parents’ names. “I didn’t know Alexis’ name was Kathryn. I didn’t know.” Nobody knew. Nobody could anticipate this.

Eleanor looks like she might open her eyes. She coos, twitches, and endears me to her like any other newborn, except for all those wires. Her right wrist rests against my belly button, umbilical bleed, unconceivable loss.

Hello and goodbye in 15 minutes. I whisper Celtic songs in a language I’ll never know. I tell the girls that Nancy and Anne want them to know they love them and wish they could have met them both, before flying out for the funeral. I kiss the mystery of their foreheads. Eleanor’s life was real. Her death is real. Quinn is real. They both are real for the rest of all of our lives. Is this what God meant by Easter?