Where Was I When My Father Died?

A poem about memory

Lonely in that dining room turned

hospital ward,

dinner now a morphine drip.

All seven of us had eaten there 

each Sunday,

you at the head of the table,

Mom at the other end,

all of us in our places.

You carved the roast,

served it to us bloody,

the blood mixing with our 

mashed potatoes and creamed corn.

Where you alone, when you were dying,

curled up like a fetus,

gasping for air?

Or was I there, in the corner,

leaning against the wallpaper with the wild roses, 

the petals still wet from an early spring rainstorm,

water dripping onto the carpet?

Was I watching you in the reflection of the mirror on the wall,

its icy blue stare,

shouting the truth?

Were you waiting for me to go?

Or was I invited to watch your death?

Did you have a choice,

in this last decision?

Reviews

[emmajoygreen]

I should have read this highly emotional and raw poem before now.

'Or was I there, in the corner,
leaning against the wallpaper with the wild roses,
the petals still wet from an early spring rainstorm,
water dripping onto the carpet?'

The above is the gentlest touch of the happening.. the saddest in a way because it was the lull before the storm. Seems that being 'there' is rarely an option, truth be known. I know. You have experienced and felt, written and shared. Anyone else who expresses an opinion about your writing when you have offered your feelings - is utterly and completely lacking empathy

[NormaZ]

Thank you Emma! I actually forgot where I was when my father died. I remembered it, but when I read my journal it was actually much different. Thanks for the encouraging comments.

[emmajoygreen]

When the passing of a loved one happens, one's emotions can be muddled, thoughts just fade into numbness, I can understand if not know your circumstances, dear lady. Journals are private places, aren't they?

[NormaZ]

So true Emma, so true.

[JayG]

Something to think about: What's in it for the reader? This is you talking about your reaction to situations that are emotionally meaningless to the reader because mostly, you're giving effect without the reader aware of the cause, other than generically.

When you say, for example: "Lonely in that dining room turned hospital ward," It may be deeply meaningful to you, because you were there and know the backstory. But the reader has only the meaning that the words suggest based on THEIR life-experience. Was my own dining room ever turned into a "hospital ward? No. And since a hospital ward, as against a hospital room, has more than two occupants, Who's there, and why so many crammed into that space?

I'm guessing you mean only one, but even had you said room, as against ward, as the words are being read, we don't know where are in time and space. We don't know who's there and why, so to the reader, there's no emotional content, only confusion as to the situation. And, you cannot retroactively remove confusion, which is why we always edit from the seat of the reader, knowing only what they know, in order to catch that.

As a minor point, the meat we get from the butcher has no blood. That's drained before the butchering begins. The juice is red, yes, but it's not blood. If it were, it would clot, forming scabs on the meat.

But that aside, when you say, "you at the head of the table" You're not talking to me, and as a reader I have not a clue of who you are talking to. So...not knowing the smallest thing about the situation, or the people, what can the line mean to the reader?

My point is that this is you talking about what's meaningful to you, to people who have not been made to WANT to know, or care. That's why we cannot use the nonfiction report-writing skills that we're given in school for poetry. Those skills use a dispassionate fact-based approach that only works for nonfiction.

Kewepin mind that readers come to poetry to-be-entertained. And what's entertaining about hearing someone talk to someone unknown about their reaction to undefined events?

Poetry readers want to be made to care and feel, not learn more about the author. Nonfiction, the methodology we learned in school, and honed by writing lots of reports, is inherently dispassionate. Using it, you'd tell the reader that someone you loved died. But...using the emotion-based skills of poetry, developed over centuries, you'd make the reader love that person, and THEN, learn of their death.

Writers have a superpower. We can make someone we will never meet weep, or smile, or fall in love, merely by our selection and placement of words. It's for that — for being made to feel those emotions — that we read.

When reading fiction we don't want to learn that our hero leads their team to victory, We want to be made to cheer as they do.

Take the words of Gelett Burgess, in his Purple Cow, which dates from 1895:

I never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.

He's made people smile with that for over 100 years. But had he written a poem about what a lousy day he was experiencing...

So, since those poetic skills are acquired IN ADDITION to the nonfiction report-writing writing skills of school, do some digging into them. As Wilson Mizner puts it: “If you steal from one author it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many it’s research.” So, research! 😋

Grab a copy of Mary Oliver's, A Poetry Handbook from the site I link to below. It's filled with insight and little gems that will have you saying, "But that's so.... How can I not have seen that myself?
https://www.docdroid.net/7iE8fIJ/a-poetry-handbook-pdfdrivecom-pdf

The thing to remember is that it's not a matter of talent, it's that we leave our school years believing that writing is writing. And since we learned how to write in school, we believe we need no more, which is a problem: who addresses the problem they don't see as being one? So, you have a LOT of company.

So jump in and do a bit of research. It never gets easier, but with study, we can become confused on a higher level.

Jay Greenstein
Articles: https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334

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“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
~ Mark Twain

[NormaZ]

Thanks for stopping by and reading my poem.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

This poem reminds me of my dad and makes me quite sad...Father's Day is always sad for me now...I miss him so much.
This is beautiful and real.

[NormaZ]

Yes, sad. I can relate.