Treasure your parents

[Guest guest]

Hi All, & Yehuda,

 

Yehuda wrote:

> May those of you who are blessed to still have  both parents, invest

> the time to honor and appreciate them while they are still alive, and

> may those of you who have shared and experienced what I am going

> through, be conscious and honor your parents memory.

 

Amen to that.

 

My parents died young (in their mid-60s). I wrote this piece for my father:

 

ABBA

(In memory of my father, Paddy the dreamer and lover of life)

 

A bog hole!

We might as well be

fishing in a bog-hole, the sun

microwaving down, the lake surface

as flat as glass. But lake shores

have seen miracles before. Casting

oiled flies as in dreamlike trance,

we went through the motions:

cast, pause, the slow retrieve,

 

the next cast. The trout were wiser than we.

Years of awkward silence lay between us

but the peaceful silence of this place

was broken by nature: birds and insects

busy, the distant bleat of sheep,

the bray of a Connemara ass.

Rising thirty-three,

I was just about right

for crucifixion or resurrection.

Dismantling my rod, I decided

 

to cast for the big one.

" Dad, it has been a long time

since you sneaked bulls-eyes upstairs;

since you told me scary bedtime stories;

since you and Mamma left a frightened child

outside the hardwood door of a granite-faced

boarding school; since your paternal pride

was full to bursting in the Aula Maxima.

It has been too long, far too long. "

 

I called him father.

He called me son.

I opened my arms for him;

he came to me like a child

and two adult males groaned

and wept in pain and joy

beside that Christ-blessed lake.

We never spoke of it again

and it was such a short year

until his funeral.

 

The name of that lake escapes me

and I never want to find it;

I fear it might turn out to be

just an ordinary place,

a giant-sized bog-hole

in a God-forsaken wilderness.

 

Yehuda, I believe that the Spirit of your dear mother now walks joyfully in the

Light and treasures her memories of her family, and of you.

 

Peace and comfort be with you.

Best regards,