WE DIE
for Carl Sagan
We die despite appointments and feuds,
while our toddler,
who recently learned to say No,
opens and shuts drawers
a hundred times a day
and our teen braces
for the rapids of romance.
We die despite the contracts
and business trips we planned,
when our desk is untidy,
despite a long list of things to do
which we keep simmering
like a pot of rich broth.
We die despite work we cherish,
marrying whom we love,
piling up a star-spangled fortune,
basking on the Riviera of fame,
and achieving, that human participle
with no known object.
Life is not fair, the old saw goes.
We know, we know, but the saw glides slow,
one faint rasp, and then at length another.
When you died, I felt its jagged teeth rip.
Small heartwounds opened and bled,
closing as new ones opened ahead.
Horror welled, not from the how but the when.
You died at the top of your career,
happy, blessed by love, still young.
Playing by evolution’s rules, you won:
prospered, bred, rose in your tribe,
did what the parent gods and society prized.
Yet it didn’t save you, love or dough.
Even when it happens slow, it happens fast,
and then there’s no tomorrow.
Time topples, the castle of cards collapses,
thoughts melt, the subscription lapses.
What a waste of life we spend in asking,
in wish and worry and want and sorrow.
A tall man, you lie low, now and forever
complete, your brilliant star eclipsed.
I remember our meeting, many gabfests ago,
at a crossroads of moment and mind.
In later years, touched by nostalgia,
I teased: “I knew you when
you were just a badly combed scientist.”
With a grin, you added: “I knew you when
you were just a fledgling poet.”
Lost friend, you taught me lessons
I longed to learn, and this final one I’ve learned
against my will: the one spoken in silence,
warning us to love hard and deep,
clutch dear ones tighter, ransom each day,
the horror lesson I saw out of the corner of my eye
but refused to believe until now: we die. Diane Ackerman
SCHOOL PRAYER
In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,
I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.
In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,
I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth, my home,
and in the mansions of the stars. Diane Ackerman
Dear Friends:
Dave died this year. At this moment, it is hard to write beyond that reality. When his heart failed him on July 19, the rich simmering broth of Dave’s life was bubbling. He was set to go to Miles City that week for a Lewis and Clark meeting. He’d begun his Billings Costco shopping list and planned dinner at Montana’s only Red Lobster (next to that Costco store)—a familiar “necessity!” A hundred projects and promises ranged across his desk.
Dave had experienced a stroke at the end of March—a hemorrhagic bleed rather than a clot. He had fought back from that with his distinctive blend of determination and denial. He was almost full time again at the Montana Historical Society, still working passionately on the new Montana history text. He was a month away from rejoining the Montana Committee for the Humanities’ speaking circuit.
To our despair and dismay, and hauntingly now, however, to our occasional delight, our lives go on.
* Over the July 4th weekend, Dave’s oldest daughter and her husband, Heather and Coby Ellison, came for a wonderful visit. Dave treasured his time talking and listening and showing Heather and Coby the “sights” that we have most enjoyed. In August, they moved from Tucson teaching jobs to new adventures in St. Louis.
* Just before Dave died, Emily and Sergio learned that Em was expecting their second child—due in late March 2007. They anticipate a little sister for Memo. In June, Em landed a job as the program coordinator for the University of Montana’s women’s studies program. If you ask his identity, Memo will tell you that he is “a cowboy,” and he sports a battered straw hat and froggy boots to match.
* In April, Amanda and Cory purchased a bungalow in Great Falls—christened this Thanksgiving with their first-ever and successful turkey cooking. In late August, Amanda began her third year teaching first graders at Sunnyside Elementary. She reports a manageable and bright class, and on some days, the slowly growing confidence of a tested classroom veteran.
* The Montana Heritage Project’s private sponsors—the Liz Claiborne and Art Ortenberg Foundation—ended their funding for the Project on June 30. On July 10, I began working for the Senior Companion Program at our regional nonprofit economic development council. Companions provide time and attention to other seniors who are trying to live independently. I now count 150 volunteers—ages 60-95—as friends and advisors. I value this opportunity to work in a field that captured my heart several years ago.
With your extraordinary help, we go on. We have been the beneficiaries of the priceless gifts of friendship, offered without questions or expectations: time, food, calls, emails, the apt observation, the loan of a book or a tent, silence, a practical idea, poems, privacy, presence, patience, chocolate, evening walks. Two hundred of your cards and notes sit beside me here at the computer. The memories of Dave and words of comfort that you’ve crafted to ease our hearts—do so. In physical and metaphysical ways, we have been lifted up by your caring.
We are learning, as Diane Ackerman describes, that death comes in the midst of life. We know that so many others have had to learn that lesson before we have. We are grateful for so much—including the “mansion of stars” that must—in some way beyond our understanding—now be Dave’s home.
