To My Beautiful Sister

Patty's struggles to fight this horrible disease are done, yet she fights on in allowing medical science to learn from her life and death.

My beautiful sister is gone from this world but remains forever in our hearts. Words cannot touch either our grief, right now, or Patty's serene and peaceful beauty.

Words sometimes come too fast and furiously to get them all down but, as they are thoughts of Patty, they are uniquely wonderful as well as painful; erudite while fraught with emotion and pain, but too many to make it intact to this blog right now.

Patty's children struggle with the death of their mother and Patty's sisters and family, drunkenly stumbling through all of this in their collective grief, try to keep it together for her bereft son and daughter, incredible images in so many ways of their Mom yet still unique and wonderful individuals in their own right. I love them so much; they are more precious than they will ever fully realize.

To those who have prayed for us, or even just sent a brief, kind thought in our direction, thank you.

To those going through this same type of struggle themselves, please know our hearts are fighting beside you though our minds must, necessarily, be elsewhere.

Our world feels smaller, more empty than before, yet incredibly full of the burgeoning life and heartbeat of this planet. I think this is as Patty would have had it.

Our greatest treasures are this life and those we have to love and who love us. All other attainments or possessions are, and should always remain, secondary to that.

Through our tears and heartache, we reach out to all others in our common humanity. Be at peace.

Izzlebug


Yet once again,
I am poured out.
An empty vessel
Cast aside upon
An endless beach of
Grief and pain.
Sand and ashes
Ebb; flowing with every tide
Until, in Time,
I stand,
Able to be filled again.

Patty, I Love You

I saw you,
Eyes full of every sorrow
And all love,
Looking 'round the room.
That day you bravely faced a future
Rife with menace
And potential doom.

Marching into frigid and frightening night,
Your shoulders straight and sure,
Giving all for the hope of life
And though spent,
Your love was pure.

Your two children now have beds
In a world bereft of your loving arms.
Your guidance and your faith
Gone; strange silence in their stead.

The strength and hope of your heart
The sure love shining from your face
Will beacon all of us to Heaven
When we each have run our race.

My sweet and gentle sister,
Though gone before yet never truly dead,
Find me when it is my time,
When I must face such fears,
Must yield such hopes,
Must rest another sad and weary head
Upon the bosom of this earth,
Cradle of both fear and birth.


Patty is still with us, but not likely for very long - tomorrow being a day of decision, one we have longed to never have to face. She is beautiful, serene, and remote. Far from us yet a permanent part of our forever. My sweet sister; light of a compassion and forgiveness I feel I only meagerly understand. She rests and cannot speak but may still be able to hear us as we try to express our love, the very genuine joy and humor she brought us, and the grief we cannot reign in at the thought of losing her love and her presence in the inexorably increasing penury of our lives.

A Kerouac Moment

I Wonder

I wonder if he would have liked me?
Probably not,because I never dared
to live, I never dared
to bare my soul
(or myself, for that matter)
to anyone before I was thirty-five.
It was only then I became fully alive
and aware.
I was always a late bloomer,
but Jack
made daring to be bare fun.
Perhaps, somewhere in his poetry,
he would understand
that I grew old first,
before my time.
Maybe he would forgive me then
and like me a little,
although being born
when you're thirty-five
is an awful waste of time.
Jack did not waste time
but now
he has no more time.
I am still alive.

Channeling Kerouac
(*note - within this poem the asterisk (*)
is meant to indicate a finger snap :-)! Also,
this poem is loosely based upon Kerouac's
work "On the Road.")

Ja-, *, Ja-, Jack
Kerouac*, -ac, -ac.
Tormented, wander-lusting soul
Hiking trails into
Inebriate burgundy depths
Of dark thoughts and days.

Father of a million Bastard children
Playing
Beat, beat, beat
With critical syntaxioms of
Unframed, wanton words
To a writing-souled
Literary Evolution Revolution.

Hot, brooding genius
And drug-tethered brains
Jailed in addictions
But salient with
Life-pulsing
Relentless pursuits of
Swing, hip, jazz.
Beatific angel flights
Through new-sky time.