Signs

Brent is a man who reads poetry. I like that about him – a lot. Every now and then he’ll send me one he thinks I’ll like. It’s one of the ways he lets me know he’s paying attention; that he cares. When we have friends in for dinner, one of us will read a poem to our guests before we eat. It’s a tradition that stems from the pre-dinner Graces we both grew up with. My father has always been the Grace-sayer in our family. These days, he’s tended to offer a Quaker Grace. I like it. A moment of silence in communion with others is powerful for me. It’s inclusive and settling, a gentle way to start a shared meal.

Last week Brent sent me this poem called, “A Story Can Change Your Life” by Peter Everwine. Bingo, I thought as soon as I read it.

A Story Can Change Your Life

On the morning she became a young widow,
my grandmother, startled by a sudden shadow,
looked up from her work to see a hawk turn
her prized rooster into a cloud of feathers.
That same moment, halfway around the world
in a Minnesota mine, her husband died,
buried under a ton of rock-fall.
She told me this story sixty years ago.
I don't know if it's true but it ought to be.
She was a hard old woman, and though she knelt
on Sundays when the acolyte's silver bell
announced the moment of Christ's miracle,
it was the darker mysteries she lived by:
shiver-cry of an owl, black dog by the roadside,
a tapping at the door and nobody there.
The moral of the story was plain enough:
miracles become a burden and require a priest
to explain them. With signs, you only need
to keep your wits about you and place your trust
in a shadow world that lets you know hard luck
and grief are coming your way. And for that
—so the story goes—any day will do.

As far as I know, I haven’t experienced signs of a death occurring as someone I’ve loved was dying, but I most certainly have gotten them after a death: hundreds of crows circling above me at Forrest’s grave after I’d specifically asked them to come close and prove they were there for me, the distinct smell of my grandfather’s Aqua Velva years after he was gone, Forrest’s beloved purple Teletubby saying “I love you” out of the blue a few weeks after Forrest died. Signs from Forrest came often and for a long, long time after he was gone. Every now and then they still do.

But I haven’t gotten any signs of my mother’s presence since her death a month ago. Makes me wonder why. What’s the difference? Part of me assumes it’s because I don’t need her to. She left when she was ready and willing to go. When I was ready to let her go. Another part of me thinks that if there is a beyond, then she’s busy. She’s got things to do, and that thought pleases me because it’s who she was – or, who she is.

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Peter Everwine’s “A Story Can Change Your Life”: ©2012 by Peter Everwine, whose most recent book of poems is Listening Long and Late, University of Pittsburg Press, 2013.

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