Warmer today. The temperature rises above 25 degrees. Ice flows move south on the Hudson. In the first light a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers gore the half dead Catalpa tree by our pond. There are eight male cardinals waiting…taking turns at the feeder. Bluejays, rosy finches, goldfinches, juncos, sparrows, titmice, chickadees, nuthatches and the smaller woodpeckers hunker in the brush. There are bird songs…some sense of spring gathers.
I take a break to walk with my friend Sunny–both of us hoping for snowshoeing weather. The predictions for tonight are that the pending storm will swing south of us…we’ll get a light dusting.
Later in the day, I visit my Dad, stopping on the way, as always, at the Goshen Bakery. This time it’s a mini Chocolate Mousse Tart and a piece Chocolate Cheese Cake to share. He’s in heaven…”Delectible!” he says, over and over again. He tells me that he’s been gone a lot and when I ask where he’s been, he says, “All over the place…everywhere! In fact, I just got back today.” Some thing has changed for me. I no longer feel the need to “correct” his reality–I just smile now and say, “I’m so glad you’re here.”
Last month I reread Reeve Lindbergh’s book, No More Words. It is a memoir of the last seventeen months of her mother’s life…the experience of coming to grips with loss, with acceptance, with the enduring wish that things might be different, with the strangeness of a parent who becomes gradually smaller, more childlike, silent, dependent, fiercely frail, disconnected, delusional and yet still here. This along with all of the second guessing, the longing and the yearning to be close, the recognition that there is no separation, the fear, the frustration, the buffeting between generosity, obligation, resentment, compassion, deep caring and protective distancing. She captures so completely the initial stages of relating to the promise of death…how the expectation, perhaps spoken–”It won’t be long now, maybe a few months.”–begins a process of stiffening and tightening, a certain quality of vigilance and separation…and how later, there’s a softening when the predictions are past their shelf life and the preciousness of connection, regardless of how it unfolds, is enough…is, in fact, deeply satisfying and nourishing. Time and the person of the parent becomes kaleidoscopic…their youthful qualities mix with memory, humor and the poignancy of the present.
The first time I read her book, I soaked the pages with tears…seeing myself; understanding and relating to all the contrasts of her life–her visits with her mother, her times with her husband and son…the joy of the changing seasons and bittersweetness of month after month after month awaiting the inevitable. This time I cried, too, but differently…perhaps simply being moved by how much I’ve let go and allowed my own heart to soften.
ENOUGH
Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath,
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now.













