Thanks to you all for your incredible support the past few hours. I've taken refuge banging on this keyboard, and have been given a bit of grace (it seems) on issues of editing and such.
I'm sad, but not any more (or less) fragile than I was before. I have gotten a little bit of sleep, so my typing is now a little less erratic. Still, even in the wonderfully generous world of E2, when losing a parent gives write-ups a protective cocoon for a bit of time, sympathy can only go so far.
("Sympathy" may be the wrong word--the way we share words here makes empathy possible.)
em-pa-thy n : capacity for participating in the feelings or ideas of another.
The Miriam-Webster Dictionary
We get to participate in our own
manipulation.
So a huge thanks to all of you.
I deleted a write-up a few days ago, and I wasn't sure why, though I knew I wanted it deleted. I thought that I had deleted it because I did not capture the rapidly fading light of August. And maybe that is why, but now, in retrospect, I think it was just a matter of timing.
My father was dying, but more rapidly than I had known. I went to visit him this past weekend, before his rapid deterioration. I cooked for him. I helped him in the usual intimate ways saved for the very young and the incapacitated. Still, we had a lovely time. Before I left Saturday night, I poured him his current favorite (and just awful) combination of orange soda and rum. I think it tastes better to him knowing others found it awful.
Or tasted. Recent death wreaks havoc on verb tenses.
I am resurrecting my deleted node here, as much for me as anything else. My father died around 11 PM on August 3rd. We say "around" because his heart had stopped twice before that, and an agonal gasp (or two) had gotten him going again. When it stopped the last time, I figured we ought to wait a few minutes before we jumped to any more rash decisions--how many times can you lose the same parent?
When the doctor came in, we explained that he stopped breathing a few minutes before 11, that his pulse went missing a few moments later, but that we just kind of waited a bit before letting Dad scare the shit out of us again.
So by mutual consensus, my father died about 11 PM.
Here it is: call it Lammas, call it Lughnasadh, no matter. As it turns out, it's a daylog.
On my bookshelf I keep a
photograph. No people. Just vegetables. Yellow and red tomatoes, deep dusky eggplants, glowing sweet peppers, fruits of a
bountiful day in a bountiful season years ago.
Today was one of those plentiful days--tomatoes, green beans, purple beans, cucumbers, robustinis--all hanging deliciously ripe, ready for eating off the plant.
Taking a picture of one's homegrown veggies is vain. Trying to capture a days harvest on film to remember in the future shows little faith in next year's harvest. The seeds were not mine. The energy harvested is not mine. I forget these things when I am too busy.
I have a picture from years ago. No need for another.The sun is setting a little earlier each night. The cicadas have started searching for love. A rapid brrrippshh--brrrippshh--brrripppshh....crescendo, then descrescendo, ending in a buzz.
The days shorten more quickly as we approach fall. Birds have been migrating since late June. I saw dozens of greater yellowlegs in the Hackensack marsh last week, headed south already.
We are not so removed from the outdoors that we completely miss cycles. It snows in January, it rains in July. Days get longer, then shorter, then longer again.
Still, it is easy (too easy) to miss the transitions. The transitions do not happen the same time each year. The crocuses were a bit late this year, the hops a bit early. A few ripe blueberries remain on the bush. The grapes have not yet started to ripen. The pumpkins have so far refused to set fruit.
Today's humid air held a hint of rot. The world is starting to ferment. The garden looks spectacular, plants laden with gifts, but in a week or two, the weeds will start to overtake the stragglers. Shortening days brings death. The world dies. The world will be reborn.
The evening of August 1
st marks the beginning of
Lammas, when many celebrate the harvest while acknowledging the coming darkness. The stored energy in our harvested grain will sustain most of us until the grain returns.
Legend also has it that the Celtic god Lugh set aside this day for rest and celebration in honor of his stepmother Tailtiu, the "The Great One of the Earth." She died of exhaustion clearing the forest so that the Celts could grow grain. She rests beneath the hill of Tailtiu, where the early Irish held games at the beginning of August in her memory.
Lugh is variously described as the god of light, of science and the arts, of agriculture. It is an Irish tale, and the "facts" can be fiddly. In early August Lugh remains strong, but his strength is waning. Lughnasadh marks the first festival of the coming harvest. Eventually the ceremonies would be subsumed by the Church as the "Loaf Mass", or lammas, a Christian holiday dating back to at least the 7th century.
The names Lammas and Lughnasadh are often used interchangeably, but more likely reflect two separate festivals that became entwined by their similarities. The timing of the festival is not accidental--it falls halway between the summer solstice and autumnal equinox.
Handfasting may have originated from the Lughnasadh--a couple who joined together on this day has the option to split up in a year and a day, or else enter a more permanent state of marriage. Finding another soul for the coming darkness makes sense.
Children today still make corn dolls, and grain still ripens in the dead heat of summer. We remain linked to the ground, to the sun, to the rains.
Dusk. Day shifts to night. In January, dusk is abrupt. The sun's long shadows quickly slip to darkness. In June, the dusk blends into late evening, with midnight sneaking up on us as we chatter past the sunlight.
My father is dying. My children know this. The idea of the grim reaper has become comical in our culture, but watching a strong man collapse from multiple strokes keeps death in the home. There are worse things than death, it turns out.
It is late in the year for sowing, but on Lammas I will plant kale for the winter. Even though the light is starting to fade, it is still strong. During a brief January thaw, I might be able to get enough leaves of kale to make a meal, leaves made from fading light.
Most days I try not to think of death, but the beginning of harvest makes such thoughts inevitable. I did not expect my father to make it this far. I wonder if he ever dreams of sowing seeds.
My father died August 3rd, a few hours after dusk, with his 4 children at his bedside. He was joking earlier in the morning, though he clearly had deteriorated. He went to sleep in the early afternoon, and he never woke up. We went back to his home, and despite the bright gibbous moon, I stared up at the stars looking for something. A few moments later, a meteor streaked above me, towards the moon.
My daughter pointed out that meteors can be seen every few minutes anyway. True, I said, but this one was unusually bright to compete with the moon's light.
We see what we want to see. Today I will finally plant the kale.
Sources:
Waverly Fitzgerald, Celebrating Lammas, http://www.schooloftheseasons.com/lammas.html
Lughnasadh, http://thunder.prohosting.com/
~cbarstow/lammas.html
Lughnasadh, http://www.celticspirit.org/lughnasadh.htm