A Marker

       Through our moves to different localities I've discovered that often our new friends were people who had also recently arrived in the community  That was true in Mohall, N.D., where Mick and Sharon, recent university graduates, were new teachers in the high school who arrived shortly before us...this was in 1968. Quickly we became friends and that friendship has only grown over the years with a variety of shared experiences.
      Friendship with Mick and Sharon has also provided a marker to measure my  recovery from losing Joanne. About a month after Joanne's death we met at the Clearwater Exit on Interstate Highway 94, for lunch. It's about an hour drive for me.  It's farther for them to drive from their lake home on West Silent Lake near Dent, MN. My memory of that lunch was that I felt like a basket case. Sharon had flown from AZ to visit Joanne while Joanne was in hospice but they weren't able to attend the funeral. So this lunch was first time seeing them after Joanne's death.  Grief  then was powerful, palpable, over powering, and raw.
     Yesterday, we met again at the Clearwater Exit. Yes, I miss Joanne terribly and the presence of absence was profound. She loved Mick and Sharon would have been tickled to share that two hour lunch. Now, while grief is still present, it's much more muted. and an ache more than a pierce. The lunch was a helpful marker for me to measure my relative position in the land of grief. Naturally it was also a gift to be with long term friends...so much wonderful shared history! 


Takk for alt,

Al

PS I'll include a poem from The Writer's Almanac, which articulates how I felt when I met Mick and Sharon 16 months ago.

Funeral Blues
by W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

"Funeral Blues" by W.H. Auden, from Collected Poems. © Random House, 2007