For Want of a Ritual
(Upon the Death of My Father)
Life should stop
if but for a brief pause. Some attention must be paid to this passing. Were we in the south, old men would pull over get out, and doff caps or hats at a stranger’s funeral procession, bowing sunburnt necks in prayerful dignity and recognition of our common destiny. Yet I, your own daughter, grateful for your life given, plow on through work, all but oblivious like a clod in the foreground of Bruegel’s Icarus that you fell into death virtually unnoticed. There’s something terribly wrong-- there’s no gathering that stops time with steps into eternity, no words, no music, no obsequious flowers, no procession of food, no laughing-good stories, not even a body to view. All has been done with a call to come remove the body for gift donation to the university you sent me to years ago. Now I send you, unable to do more like I wished you had by sending me to private school all those years ago. There’s no karmic satisfaction here, only regret; you deserve better than to be scooped up by state workers in the same salary level as those who remove dead dogs from the side of the road by tossing beloved family pets lost, forgotten, unclaimed, into the back of a truck. Your loss feels like my life’s roadkill. In my rush to get ahead, to make you proud, I left you running blind in the night to die alone by the highway to be expediently disposed. Something’s terribly wrong! Kyrie’s must be cried, confessions said, absolution pronounced, assurance offered . . . and received. Ritual help is needed to navigate conflicting demands of love and duty. But instead, Nothing stops. Children go on to school, dogs still bark for food, deadlines require meetings. Lessons need learned and mortgages paid. Life goes on. I find, with the Victorians, who knew how to do death up right, even in all their maudlin mourning, that I crave death knells, a public notice of death’s cruel passing by the door of a house wreathed in black crepe. Is there a black armband, at least? Where’s the jazz band to walk a grave procession then dance back in singing praise? Where’s the feast of honor for all the saints who’ve stepped lively on? Nowhere. Here’s my only ritual: an elegiac lament writ large in pity-- a poem for a dead poet who, stripped of words, went silent for further study by detached, scientific observers, poetic reckoners of their own. So ring out the injustice of our lack of witness to a life precious and fiery soaring so close to the sun. Some attention must be paid to this passing, if but for a brief pause. Life should stop. Then, and only then, can we don our hats, get back on the road, and, with more studied awareness, proceed. © 2007, Tess Lockhart. All rights reserved. |