Dearly Departed

4/8/2016

"Iowa Spring Mourning"  © H. Newberry

Given that life and death kinda go together, funerals happen.  We'd rather they didn't.  In fact, that particular summons is one we could happily do without.  Yet everyone - and I do mean everyone - will find themselves at one at some point.  Either as an attendee or the main headliner.  It's inevitable.  These gatherings dot our lives like - well, tombstones.

There's quite a bit of diversity available with which to throw our final party.  Excluding the most outlandish ones (in which someone was buried in a bulldozer or fired out of a canon) or the literal-'Tree-Hugging-GO-GREEN' ones (the beloved is crammed into a decomposable pod made of organically-raised mushroom fibers with an acorn cradled in their hands), I'm pretty sure I've covered the spectrum of what's out there.  Family ones, friend ones - and yes - even strangers.  Hillbilly ones.  Yuppie ones.  Inside.  Outside.  Internments and ashes.  I've cried at Taps and jumped when 21 guns saluted.  Bagpipes have wailed Amazing Grace and rock songs have been played one last time.  There have been speeches, letters, poems, biographies, videos and reminiscences.  Just about anything can be, and has been, brought out to set the tone.  Yet, with all that's possible in the celebration of a life ended, there's one (IMHO) toxic consistency everyone struggles to endure.

This week my city lost an amazing son.  Kind, funny, always there when you needed a lift, advice, or an extra set of hands, he was well-known and well-loved by nearly everyone in our town.  The spouse and I included.  So it was no surprise when we arrived at the funeral home to find every nook and cranny rapidly filling up.  Seated in a side room with a flat screen television and sound system, we watched as the tributes began.  No less than three pastors spoke, offering personal recollections of his benevolence, practical jokes and wild sense of humor.  I mean, in lue of choosing songs from a play list, the family opted for videos of him singing.  At his own funeral!  (How awesome is that!?)  People were sad, but comforted.  It was good, a celebration where even the most restrained individuals chuckled at one point or another.  And, more importantly, in the front row, his family smiled for what looked like the first time in days.

But then, (duh-duh-dun) the PREACHER happened.  HE began HIS 'tribute' to our dearly departed with the announcement that we were now HIS captive audience.  "And", HE bellowed defiantly (clenched fists and hard, challenging glare present and accounted for), "HE didn't PREACH quiet in church so HE wasn't gonna PREACH quiet here!"

And so began a 40-minute siege during which HE proceeded to completely turn the tide.  There was no more celebration.  No more healing.  No more comfort.  Hell, there wasn't even room for our city's beloved son.  Even grief wasn't allowed to linger in the corners.  It was God's party now and, apparently, Jehovah was pissed because blaring indictments of our unworthiness and impending, eternal damnation roared from the podium liberally accessorized with glowering, dire promises of our eminent demise.  The culmination of this one-man platform for conversion was a demand that we recite the 'Sinner's Prayer' - en masse.  (Actually, I was to find out later I was incorrect about the ending.  Apparently, after the prayer, the assault concluded with an invitation to seek HIM out after the service to join HIS church.)

The reason I was mistaken about the ending was because 25 minutes after HE lobbed the first volley we - the spouse and I - stepped outside.  We didn't want to.  We wanted to honor of our friend.  And we tried everything to cope.  Inner dialogue to calm feelings of alienation and outrage.  Reliving memories.  Meditations on peace and love.  Deep-breathing techniques.  When those didn't help I worked a rather nasty blister on my heel against the back of my shoe in the hopes the discomfort would distract me.  It did not.  In the end, we gave up, stood up and exited the building, heart-broken and hurting for his no longer smiling family.

Origin unknown

Unfortunately, this is not a new experience for me.  At my father's funeral, the PREACHER kept addressing him as Alvin (my father's name was William) and assured us if we didn't want to wind up in hell alongside him we'd better prostrate ourselves before the coffin and give our lives over to God. At my Aunt's, we were threatened with the same brain cancer which had killed her if we weren't 100% invested in the Southern Baptist Savior (which confused me because if God was killing non-Southern Baptists with brain cancer why was she dead?  After all, she was Southern Baptist.).  At the service of a teen, we were again tormented with our mortality, our only chance at avoiding a horrible death being spiritual salvation and church attendance.  Nearly twenty kids dropped to their knees sobbing before the casket and I had to hold onto his mother to keep her from screaming or walking out given that throughout the planning she had specifically and repeatedly begged not to have something like this happen.

I could go on, but I've laid enough ground.  So here (if you become a regular reader of Modern Prometheia, you will come to expect this) are my questions.  Why, in the name of All-Hallowed-Things, do we allow this to continue!?  At what point in history did we turn funerals into eternal damnation and conscripted salvation instead of celebrating the life and comforting the loss?  Who came up with the idea that scriptural, high-voltage condemnations of the human condition were in anyway conducive towards helping those who are grieving?  Or even encouraging them to turn to God for comfort?  Has it always been okay for PREACHERS to approach these events like a hard-driven, Vendor Expos for God, Christ and their Mother Church?  And if it has, is this exclusive to Christianity?  Or do other faiths do this?  Are the spouse and I the only ones who find this offensive?  Or are there others who sit, outraged?  Or miserable, damned and condemned?  Or don't go to funerals altogether just to avoid this very thing?  Do we all have similar horror stories tucked away in some steel-reinforced, memory vault because they did more damage than good in the moments we were so emotionally raw?

If you have an answer to any or all of these, please let me know.  Opinions and facts are welcome.  Memories and tales will be honored and appreciated.  Because I deeply suspect the spouse and I are not alone in this.

The only truly comforting funeral I've ever attended was for my mother, the most devout Christian I have ever known.  A joyous commemoration of her, which included her love for God, it was liberally seasoned with scriptures, hymns, prayers, yet also included her sense of humor, her love for people and her quirky personality.  The difference being it was presided over by a pastor.  Fortunately for my family, he was a man who had suffered just such an assault early in his ministry.  As we sat around the table telling him what we did and did not want for our mother's final tribute he shared with us the promise he made to God after his own experience.  To never lose sight of the fact that he was a shepherd, a minister, a pastor and his main charge was to offer love, guidance and comfort.  Instead of exploiting grief in an effort to get us to convert or reaffirm, he led us in a prayer that praised God for her birth, her life and for taking her to a place without pain and fear.

More than any other life event funerals have shown me a definite distinction between a pastor and a PREACHER and when you find yourself at a long, highly-polished table in the hushed, soothing atmosphere of your local funeral home, consider it.  Though it will be one of the most emotionally devastating times in your life, choose wisely.  Look for someone who understands the true charge of his or her office is not to batter already hurting souls into submission in an attempt to boost church membership.

I honestly believe the way you feel when you step out the door after a service is the first move towards recovering from the loss of your loved one.  Not an easy journey, by any means, but the burden shouldn't be exacerbated by a thoughtless, compassionless abuse of leadership.

"Funeral of a Viking" by Sir Francis Bernard Dicksee

As we get older - the spouse and I - and thoughts of our own last rites become more prominent, we leave each funeral with a determined look at our offspring.  "When it's my turn," one of us will say, "get a shaman in a loin-cloth and feathered headdress.  Or a bald-headed Buddhist who can't speak a word of English.  We'd even go for a skald in a winged helmet presiding over a flaming, Viking funeral.  But whatever you decide to do, if you see a PREACHER coming, nail the damn door shut and send everyone home!"

Speechless

Speechless by H. Newberry © 2016

In a place where I can't find words
I would reach for the colors
you spilled onto my pallet.
All the pieces of us we made together
shaded by who and what we were.
They are here,
waiting for my brush
to glide through them
and float up
working them into a portrait -
of how you filled my world-
and brought me laughter
and love
and the tender closeness of
twinned steps trodding across the canvas of my soul-
but I cannot move.
I just sit in this quiet place,
words unformed outside me
drifting in the dusty air
against the images of ghosts,
no more than a questioned memory
as I stare down at colors
that cannot speak for me
because they are muddied by the scars you left behind.

Just Bleed

4/02/2016

George Gordon Lord Byron, English poet

 In a letter dated January 2, 1821, George Gordon Byron wrote "If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad".  For those who are unacquainted with Lord Byron, suffice it to say he was (and in the dusty, back-stacks of  libraries and English Lit classes, still is) considered one of the greatest English poets to have ever bled on paper. Labeled 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' by one of his many lovers, Byron was a slave to his overactive passions for scandal, adventure and word-smithing.
The fascinating life lived by this hostage to the quill, however, is not the basis for this post though I highly recommend delving into it when you need to assuage the occasional human urge for gossip, titillation and old-world, tragic romance(s).  Everyone loves a bad boy, after all, and, at times, Byron was as bad as they come.

Instead, my point of focus is the aforementioned quote. To those outside the world of writing it's funny and wildly melodramatic. For people who dabble in stringing letters into words and words into sentences when the mood strikes, it's cute.  One that teases up grimacing smirks of agreement and happy self-martyrdom.  But to a few, to those held captive by the craft, it's a low moan of desperation.  A deep, guttural whimper laced with near lunacy, self-doubt and subjugation.  And it tastes like blood.

Allow me to elucidate:
 
When a non-writer wakes up, the day is in place and filled with tangibles.  For them there are few launch points from which an abductor can snatch them up and fling them, without warning, into realms of the implausible, the fantastic or run-away thought. All the components of a glass of orange juice, for example, are exactly what they seem to be. A glass of orange juice. Rising from bed, the non-writer stumbles to the kitchen, reaches into the cupboard and grabs the glass.  Setting it on the counter (or perhaps carrying it) they venture across the unnoticed floor to the refrigerator.  Opening it, they grab the carton and return to the glass which is still just a glass. The lid comes off.  The juice goes in.  Lid goes back on.  'Fridge handle, light (if they've replaced the burned out bulb), and - bam -they're standing on cool tiles, scratching their butt, thinking about the day while drinking cold, sweet nectar.

The Bedlam of Creation, 1898 

When a writer wakes up (provided the blessed oblivion of sleep was achieved) they find themselves already committed  They stare up - not into the darkness- but at it.  There are no walls.  No floor.  No bed they are aware of.  Instead, rising to their enslavement, they find a world teaming with ideas and imagery.  Around them is the abyss filled with the souls of the damned.  The void of a voracious black hole sucking stars, cosmos and tiny, silver ships down it's gullet.  It is the Stygian shadows of an evil night through which an assassin creeps stealthily towards a slumbering king.  Or the velvet bower of entwined lovers. Eyes captivated and wide they struggle uselessly against the straps of the over-active drive to create flatly refusing to partner with their need to live anything remotely like a normal life.

When the bleating demands of the body finally become fierce enough to prod through the screams of the dying, the sighs of the loving and the machinations of traitors, the inmate rolls towards the floor.  But it's not a floor.  Its the surging deck of a sailing ship.  It's the lush, dewy grass of a pre-dawn meadow.  It's the hard, icy stone of a dungeon floor.  Across the room the sinister maw of the door waits.  Behind it?  Amazons.  The Inquisition.  Whoville. Who knows?

On to the bathroom; outhouse, privy, the WC, the fullest bush in the forest.  And all the while the mind swirls and swings as the Director slams in and yanks out pieces and parts, plots and twists.  The needs of the physical body addressed, it once more becomes nearly non-existent, a non-thing moving on pure instinct.  There is an animal lunge towards the kitchen in search of sustenance because the victim has not been allowed to recognize the need for food since the day before. Overhead light blooms and it is God speaking.  Or a super-nova.  Or the burning rays of a Machiavellian sun searing the life force from two courageous souls struggling to cross a barren desert. The glass is not a glass. It is a chalice, a tankard, a wooden ladle.  The refrigerator is now a morgue filled with shelves of pale feet adorned with dangling toe-tags.  Or a moss-covered, stone-stacked well, musky with the mingling echo of earth and moisture.  And the orange juice is laced with poison, the Elixir of Life or the yokes of ten-thousand eggs ready to create the world's largest omelet.

Thoughts dragged through hell and yonder, brain forced to fire on more than all pistons, the writer lives tormented, trapped between genre and reality.  Much akin to the lunatics of old they are driven outside of life, made to be little more than trapped, morbid witnesses. Even when allowed to be an actual participant they are mutated into involuntary gawkers and frantic hoarders.  Everything they see, everything they hear, everything they experience lurks in dismantled fragments tossed into piles and cabinets and boxes and chests in the over-packed storehouse lining the parameters of their captivity.

To those wandering through these labyrinthine passages, this endless maze of 'what-ifs' and 'how-abouts' and 'why does Charlie drink the gasoline?' it can be as disheartening as it is consuming.  Comprised of wards promising production they find, more often than not, the dead-ends and locked doors of frustration. And all ruled by a relentless taskmaster driving them onward.  Living at the mercy of this dictator is precarious, a wobbling sway between madness and hope.  It's a nightmare.  An intricate, exacting dance above a crevasse while balanced tenuously on the slippery edge of endless 'maybes'.

The possibility of a day-pass only comes from a thread-like stream of ink. Barely the width of a human hair. But even that is not enough for a reprieve. To fully gain one second of freedom, a moment of self-ownership, one unencumbered breath or focused thought, the ink must bleed well.  The work has to be written plausibly and flow into some undefinable yet instinctively recognized rhythm.  Only then will the gate swing open and perhaps - just maybe - the patient can steal a few, blessed hours in which to sleep, to eat, to do something other than roam demented through the darkness in search of sanity.

'If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad".  Some people get it. They understand exactly what Lord Byron was saying.  They live within it, surrounded as it creates the bars between them and real, living people.  Were they here and coherent, they could probably explain it better than I.  But they're not.  They're off somewhere - a dank, moldy cavern, a swaying, decrepit bell-tower, or roaming one of the levels of Dante's hell because Timmy has fallen in the well, The King is dead (Long live the King), Sir Percival has lost his Faith and Charlie needs someone to call the paramedics.

To Begin With...

3/29/2016

Allow me to begin this foray into the vastness of the electric universe by admitting - up front - I have absolutely no idea what I am doing.

As a writer I have a grasp on the art of stringing words together in an attempt to formulate thought into a shareable medium by which to express the ramblings taking place in my inner-world.   That, however, is where my confidence in this endeavor ends.   I admit, out-rightly and without shame, I am a techno-holdout.   I didn't even possess a cell phone until about five years ago.   (And, yes, it was a simple flip-phone with no internet capability.)   It took me almost six months to send my first text message.   Over a year before I tried to take and send a photo.  In the spirit of true confession - I still own a typewriter, a stove-top percolator, fully-functioning hurricane lamps and nibbed pens. 

Call me a Luddite if you will.   I'm okay with it.  Really.   I've been called worse.   A lot worse...

It has been recommended to me - repeatedly and with copious amounts of eye-rolling - that it would enhance my word-smithing skills were I to begin a blog.  Given my glaring lack of human interaction  (I do live in the rural Mid-west, after all.  The majority of my ponderings, readings and writings are targeted at fur-bearing creatures who are long on listening but rather sparse on feedback)  and reinforced by the changing face of publishing, communications and - yes, let's face it - even human relationships it has been dictated that I set aside a shrieking reluctance born from unwillingness to tackle the frustration which rears its Hydra-headed fury at my inability to instantly know exactly what to do, where everything is and how everything works, and JUST DO THIS THING.  (Their bellowing.  Not mine.) 

So here I stand, a sad, pitiful sight.   Sweaty hand clutching my trusty quill, wonky lantern bobbing at my hip, staring out at an abyss of ominous shadows masking anything remotely familiar.   For a change I am far less worried about teasing and testing 'what demons lurk in the heart of humankind' than I am about what will happen if I hit this button, post that photo or try to add a link.  Far in the distance, across the ominous, shifting terrain I can feel the boundaries of my Innerscape - that place in which all possible strangeness exists waiting to be explored and mapped and where I am blessedly more at home than any of the places I have been forced to exist.   But first, I must step out on an epic (so I have been assured over and over and over) journey to locate my personal passage from there to here.

Being a guide is not unknown to me.   Give me a paper and a pen or a pair of eyes to stare into and I can lead a mind from point 'a' to 'zed' with all the beguilement of an impassioned Rasputin...  (Hmm..that may be a rather bad analogy given how it ended for him...)  Anyway - I lead well.   Provided my launch point is from inside my  personal domain and does not involve anything remotely electronic.  Given that, as your guide, I feel it is my duty to warn you up front - this is not going to go smoothly, quickly or with anything even approaching finesse.  It will most likely be a  tripping, stumbling, butt-sliding, back-tracking, curse-laden, down-hill rush and up-hill climb filled with false starts and abrupt halts.  Not to mention meandering, confusing detours into waysides fraught with every random topic under the sun.  Or moon, as the case may be.

For those who are willing to bear the marks, bruises and winces, I thank you.   For those who are not -I wish you Godspeed and good times...

H. Newberry