We got out for an afternoon hike before Tuesday’s forecast of plummeting temperatures and snow.
We weren’t alone.
The deer aren’t the only ones who are good at camouflage.
There’s more to fall than red and yellow.
Stairway to where? December?
_____________Our World Tuesday
The view from here with pizza and beer.
We ordered the kitchen sink (as in with everything on it) and enjoyed it on our favorite Dogtown Roadhouse couch. 
I really regret that I didn’t dance to that Lou Reed song.
It’s easy to trip
on the mess left behind
that piles up like newspapers
at a dead person’s door
I can’t stand upright
amid the unwanted boxes
A single light bulb dangles
Insulation is exposed
It’s like the mind of the house
where forgotten thoughts inhabit
where outgrown interests
are like star crossed sweethearts
It’s easy to deny
my part of the plastic mass
as large as the state of Texas
floating in the Pacific
Grounded by gravity
my space debris collects
like extra pounds to carry
like refugees hidden from view
But even water evaporates
and returns as rain
Bodies decompose
and fly away as dust
that must land somewhere
If life can’t be created or destroyed
but can only change its form
nothing can really be thrown away
only moved from room to room
________Colleen Redman / Poets United
It was part birthday party, part house concert and part book signing. It was a small gathering of friends at my friend Alwyn’s Blacksburg home to celebrate her 93rd birthday. Amid the chocolate cherry cake, pumpkin pie, cherry garcia ice cream and her cat Cloudy, who wanted to get in the act, was a gift that Alwyn gave to each of us: the new expanded edition of her poetry collection, Remembering Their Names, a chapbook with twenty-eight poems from the original printing and fifteen new poems, along with the added subtitle A Gathering Time.
Dedicated to her mentor Thomas Berry, the collection reflects Alwyn’s sensitive awareness of the beauty and suffering of the world with poetry that she describes in the chapbook’s acknowledgement as a “legacy of my life.” The poems are an integrated part of her life as an author and environmentalist and are a testament to her awe of nature and her tenderness towards all living creatures.
Speaking of the first twenty-eight poems, she writes in the book’s introduction “… Having moved to southwest Virginia from a big city life in New York and elsewhere, I felt more at home almost at once as I breathed in the environment rich in trees, mountains and hills and the local wildlife that was prevalent at that time in this part of Appalachia…” She laments the loss of species “…But with the butterflies and birds, the great mammals and countless other species diminishing, I felt a greater need than ever to convey what I felt and saw of the plants and creatures in the first part of this collection.
The names in the first part include trees, waterfalls, a wasp, a snapping turtle and even slugs. She chronicles the death of a fish, a cat she has loved, a rabbit in the road “… Using some old newspapers from the backseat of the car / to protect me from maggots and the smell / But not the eye. No hiding from that circle of black / that seared through all defenses / A glistening sightless orb, wide open in surprise…” In Discount City, she is mournful of the loss of habitat and wildlife “… No memory of seeds remains under those vast acres of concrete / to remind us of the trees whose blossoms turned to fruits / with branches that held nests of promise every spring / and roots as homes for beings whose names / are written in the book of holy things…
Poem titles include The Empty Field, The Dog Tied Up, Plows into Swords, Elephants and Consider the Cows “…Their intimacy – the commonness – their lack of pride / a sense of stillness… Unlike the lilies of the field they work / jaws moving all day, laboring into fullness / All that we leave alone / still does its task, obeys / lifts up its life in constant praise…”
The fifteen news poems in A Gathering Time are a welcomed addition to the collection. Reluctant over the years to focus on human-centered living, Alwyn reveals herself as an artist painting sensuality with words, intimate and moving, personal. She writes of these poems that they were “written as I reflected on my human relationships – those most important in my childhood as well as from a later period in life when romantic love filled a different role…”
In a poem titled The Onion, she writes, “Mother, mother, pin a rose on me / But she only grew onions in her garden / preferring them to roses, which she said / she could not eat, but liked by far / “the juicy hardness of an onion” / And she too kept her layers tightly shut/ Knew how to protect her core…Only now, dear lady gone / I see your inner star.
In Memory, she writes of her father diving off a high board and landing head flat on his stomach “…Coming out of the pool shaking the pain off / like a dog does water / Pretending it wasn’t bad / For me. For me. / Daddy, courage was what you wanted / for your cowardly child / And so you climbed the stairs and dove / from where you had never dared to dive before / as I watched / I remember, I do remember / now an old woman cutting her hair.
One of my personal favorites, In Moving the Bed, relates to her love life. “… Dragged from that corner / that little known niche / where it held what it held / far from the fray – now joggled and shaken and open to view / on the back of a truck / Down the roaring highway / On its way to another space / another place. So different / Dazed as creatures whose personal space / is a root or a hole or a lair in a cave / We blink like bats frightened into day…
Another favorite is The First Tree, in part, because I remember her telling me about that tree, the only one in her busy city block that she could see from her bedroom window, a gingko. I also love it because it ends on such sweetly innocent note. “…Love? For that? / Even the branches were too frail to climb / although we tried. Yet decades later that single tree / erect and small in the long corridor / of grey lives in my eyes / holding my childhood on its thin arms / like laundry on a line … Ah tree, you made the world a promise / Your quiet breath at night beneath my city window / helped me sleep, entered my dreams / told me secrets from another dream / Still remembered … the secrets have come true.” – Colleen Redman
Post note: A week before her birthday open house, Alwyn and I spoke on the phone. She has a hard time hearing over the phone, so when I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, she answered, “A new pair of ears!” I brought her, a cat lover and author of Never Love a Feral Cat, cat ears, which she wore for the entire birthday celebration.
1. So, I wrote a poem with the term “stream of consciousness” in it. Curious, I did some research on its actual meaning and learned it was first used for a literary technique by James Joyce when he put a microphone in his character’s heads and showed how they think. Eventually, I ended on a site that talked about how the mind thinks and the art of introspection, “giving careful, extensive and probing attention to the initially obscure transient and complicated thoughts and feelings that swirl around in our minds.”
2. The site, The School of Life, gave words to what I practice with their description of “philosophical meditation.” “It can be hard to find the mental freedom to look deeply into our more confused and unedited caverns when onlookers are waiting for something sensible or simply normal to emerge from our mouths. We might be lying in bed or sitting by a window. We’d ideally have half an hour without interruption, with paper and pen to hand to seize ideas and feelings as they emerge from the mental undergrowth. With the patience of ornithologists, we would be out to catch the mind in its most fleeting, tentative, furtive moments.”
3. That’s the way I write poetry.
4. This is the part that hooked me and explained my mistrust of overused platitudes and buzzwords that keep us from thinking deeper and putting things in our own words: “Some of the content we hold in our minds is coherent and very easy to grasp, but it suffers from a marked draw-back: it isn’t really ours. It’s second-hand, stale and a derivative bank of ideas and plans. We have certain notions in our heads that come, not from our deeper resources of feeling and intuition but from what we have sucked in uncritically from outside from what we’ve read in the newspaper or heard about from parents or friends. These are: our received ideas. We don’t need to think hard at all to regurgitate them. They’re just waiting in prepackaged form in the reception room of our minds. And yet, it’s only the thoughts and feelings that are originally unprocessed that come from the caverns in ourselves that are the ones richest in information.”
5. When I wasn’t researching on the internet (or going to Halloween parties), I was watching THIS, not your mother’s fashion show and way more interesting than a cat video.
6. Here’s what one reviewer said about the designer’s fantastic art sculpture clothes: “Writing about Iris van Herpen, one can find oneself mired in the technicalities of her creations. There’s computer programming and physics and alchemy behind each one; they’re complicated to make and just as difficult to explain. Better is to think of her work as art pieces, with each dress a canvas and the model who wears it the frame on which it’s stretched. This season van Herpen collaborated with American kinetic sculptor Anthony Howe, whose pieces are powered by the wind.
7. Buzzwords are shortcuts that make sense to people informed of the context, but can become co-opted into general speech and lose their usefulness. Buzzwords also feature prominently in politics, where they can result in a process which “privileges rhetoric over reality, producing policies that are ‘operationalized’ first and only ‘conceptualized’ at a later date.” The resulting political speech employs language exclusively for the purposes of control and manipulation… Wikipedia
8. I don’t generally like buzzwords but idioms – word combinations that have a different figurative meaning than their literal meaning – are like poetry to me.
9. Here’s an idiom poem called Losing Pieces by Shel Silverstein: Talked my head off / The conversation never stops / Worked my tail off / Sweating buckets of drops / Cried my eyes out / Which left an ocean of tears / Walked my feet off / Which I haven’t seen in years / Sang my heart out / I am barely alive / So you see– There’s really not much left of me
10. Halloween Party # 1 where I offered anyone a free beer if they could figure out who Yoda was HERE. Halloween Party #2 where dancing to The Kind was the best kind of therapy HERE.
11. I called Dan’s apartment when John, Joey, and Nancy, who were going to drive Dan’s Toyota Tundra truck back to Massachusetts, were there to close it down. “I have a strange request. Bring me a pair of Dan’s shoes. I want to keep them in my closet,” I said. The request was related to one of my most vivid childhood memories, and one that has been re-stimulated with Dan’s passing. When Danny was almost four years old, he went to Florida with our grandparents for the summer, but they ending up keeping him for a whole year. A year might as well be a lifetime in the mind of a child, in the minds of children. I was five and was rummaging through the room that Dan and Jim shared when I found a pair of Danny’s shoes in the closet. They were a 1950’s style, brown with white in the center. Finding them was an abrupt reminder of the brother I used to have, the one I had forgotten about, the one I wanted back! I carried those shoes around with me all day while I cried inconsolably. I wanted my parents to witness my anguish, so they would get my brother back home for me. I asked for a pair of Dan’s shoes because I don’t want to forget my brother, the child he was, the man he was. I wish he could come back, like he did from Florida. – From Chapter 3 of The Jim and Dan Stories. More HERE.
12. My poem Nightly News Prison Break was recently published in WINEDRUNK SIDEWALK: SHIPWRECKED IN TRUMPLAND HERE.
13. Never is ever not.
___________Thirteen Thursday
The last few weeks of my brother’s lives played out like the conclusion of a dramatic Hollywood script, a plot with a twist. The road trip they took, two weeks before the first death, became the beginning of a larger journey, the one in which they would both leave this world.
I have decided to share my book, The Jim and Dan Stories, chapter by chapter, to have it available online, since it is no longer available in print. The book, which was used in a Radford University grief and loss class for counseling students, is part an account of my brothers last weeks and their deaths a month apart, part memoir of growing up together on the South Shore of Boston in a large Irish Catholic family of 11, and part a chronicle of coping with the first six months of life-altering grief. I plan to post a chapter every Wednesday until the book is done. I added a new side bar category “Jim and Dan Stories” on the blog (to the right) for easy access to chapters which will amount to the whole book eventually.
3.
The Last Rites
“Are you ready for the priest, Dan?”
By this point, we were able to read Dan’s slightest expression or his most subtle nod. We all knew his answer was, “Yes.”
I wasn’t quite prepared for a priest from Africa with an accent and a white lab coat on. “You know we want a priest?” I said.
“I am a priest,” he answered.
“You know that Dan is Catholic?” I added.
“I am a Catholic,” he answered.
Receiving The Last Rites turned out to be a very important part of Dan’s last day. The relief that he felt when the priest put his hand on Dan’s forehead, pronouncing his past sins absolved, was palpable. Danny’s whole body fell back further into the bed as if he had been shocked. Although I hadn’t been a practicing Catholic for many years, I whispered to my sister, “That looks good to me. I want that at my death.”
This wasn’t the first time Dan received The Last Rites. Back in the early 70’s someone dropped Danny off late at night on my parent’s doorstep. He was barely alive, suffering from a drug overdose, one that it didn’t look like he would recover from. He was taken by ambulance to the emergency room where he was given The Last Rites. Not only did Dan recover, but both he and Jim turned their lives around by conquering drug addiction of the worst kind.
Ironically, my father also lost two brothers prematurely, one to a heart condition, the other to a WWII Japanese Prison Camp in The Philippines. It was common to lose young men to war. In the mid 70’s in Hull and the surrounding areas, it was fairly common to lose them to drugs. And the young men we didn’t lose then, we are losing now to Hepatitis C.
One of the symptoms of the advanced stages of liver disease is inappropriate or mean-tempered behavior due to the body’s inability to eliminate toxins. This explained why Dan was sometimes confused or not easy to get along with when he was in the hospital. The kidney dialysis was a long shot that, in the end, could not save Danny’s life. What it did do was clear out the toxins that had built up in his body, allowing him a peaceful lucidity and a return to himself in the last days of his life, for which I will always be grateful.
Soon after The Last Rites, Dan’s breathing tubes were taken off. After a loud sigh of relief and speaking to us briefly–“I’m all right,” and then a last “Hello,” to Kathy (who he had not yet spoken to since she arrived in Houston five days after I did)–he was able to breathe on his own for two hours.
“Do you want some pain medication (morphine), Dan?” Jeanne asked sometime during those last two hours when Dan’s breath became more labored. We all saw his answer. It was “No.”
Shoes in the Closet
My brother John had a dream shortly after Dan died. He had arrived at Dan’s apartment with the U-haul (which he actually did do weeks later) to close it down, and Dan was there. John was astounded! “Dan, you’re dead! How can this be,” he asked?
“I know I’m dead, but I’m all right,” Dan answered, and then he said, “And now it’s like Christmas.” The dream continued with Dan giving away his belongings to John and other family members.
We all wanted John, the only sibling besides me now who was not living in Massachusetts, to have Dan’s computer. “We want you online. We want to keep track of you,” I told him. John, the black sheep, hard drinking fisherman rouge, who had also contracted Hepatitis C from drug use in the 70’s and was now determined to stay sober in every way, sometimes needed to be kept track of.
When Kathy, Jeanne, (who came after my mother left), and I were staying in Dan’s apartment, we got a phone call from John. John had lived with Danny for several years in Quincy, Massachusetts, and then in Texas, and was particularly broken up. He cried when he asked us if he could do Dan’s eulogy. We all knew it was his calling, especially since our youngest sister, Tricia, had a dream that John was singing “Let it be” in the church during Dan’s funeral. He didn’t sing, but we did play “Let it be”
the morning of the burial, and John did give a moving eulogy for Dan. We all choked up when he ended it with, “…Today we put my big brother Dano to rest beside his big brother Jim. I guess that makes me the big brother now.”
I called Dan’s apartment when John, Joey, and Nancy, who were going to drive Dan’s Toyota Tundra truck back to Massachusetts, were there to close it down. “I have a strange request. Bring me a pair of Dan’s shoes. I want to keep them in my closet,” I said. The request was related to one of my most vivid childhood memories, and one that has been re-stimulated with Dan’s passing.
When Danny was almost four years old, he went to Florida with our grandparents for the summer, but they ending up keeping him for a whole year. A year might as well be a lifetime in the mind of a child, in the minds of children. I was five and was rummaging through the room that Dan and Jim shared when I found a pair of Danny’s shoes in the closet. They were a 1950’s style, brown with white in the center. Finding them was an abrupt reminder of the brother I used to have, the one I had forgotten about, the one I wanted back! I carried those shoes around with me all day while I cried inconsolably. I wanted my parents to witness my anguish, so they would get my brother back home for me.
I asked for a pair of Dan’s shoes because I don’t want to forget my brother, the child he was, the man he was. I wish he could come back, like he did from Florida.
Murphy’s Law
“These stories are great!” my sister Sherry’s email read. “You should get them published into a book!” her husband, Nelson, added.
I had been writing all weekend and was in a mild mania which meant, besides not sleeping well and writing obsessively, that I was feeling rather grandiose about my writing. Sherry and Nelson’s comments brought me back down to life-size. Who did I think I was? I couldn’t write a book. Besides, they couldn’t see the scraps of scribbled pages in every room of my house that I would have to puzzle together, once I could figure out how to read my own writing.
Just a week before when I was at my friend Katherine’s house, she handed me a book about two sisters growing up together and said, “Here. This is like the book you’re going to write someday.” After looking it over, I handed it back. “This is a novel. I only want to read memoirs right now,” I said.
A few days later she, determinedly, drove over to my house and handed me another book. Knowing that we share a love of reading “all things Irish” and that it was a memoir, she had checked out a library book for me. It was called “Are You Somebody? An Accidental Memoir” and was written by Nuala O’Faulan. “The accidental memoir part reminds me of something you would say,” she said.
When Jim died, I wrote his eulogy. I said to Sherry, “It’s as if I’ve been learning to write all my life to come to this point. What could be a more important vocation than to write a loved one’s eulogy?” Now, it’s as if I haven’t been able to stop writing Jim’s eulogy. After he died, I remember thinking, “Jimmy, I wish everyone knew you.” This writing may be my way of trying to make that happen. Maybe this is the book Katherine knew I would write.
I think of my self-depreciating reaction to Sherry and Nelson’s comments as a genetic trait, one that is most probably Irish Catholic. It reminded me of one of the last stories I shared with my family from when Jim was visiting me: Jim was always an excellent athlete–all those hours as a kid hitting rocks at the beach with a stick had paid off. One of the things he wanted to do while in Virginia was play golf with my husband, Joe, which he did. After the “first nine,” Joe called me on the phone for some reason I can’t remember now. “How’s it going?” I asked him. “Jim’s kicking my ass!” was his answer. “Yes!” I thought. I was secretly rooting for Jim.
When they returned home, I heard the rest of the story. Somewhere, after the first nine holes, Joe complimented Jim, saying, “Jimmy, that is the longest and most beautiful shot I’ve ever seen anyone make on that hole.” It was all downhill for Jim after that. To put it in Jim’s own words, after that compliment, he “sucked!”
Somehow, I thought that golf story about Jim was sweet. I also thought it sad, remembering my Dad’s “to
the point” words when talking about his family. “We were a talented bunch, but none of us lived up to our full potential,” he told me. Something to do with the far-reaching effects of our ancestral legacy of Irish poverty and oppression, I suspected.
Dreaming of Beach Front Property
My brothers feel so far away, not because they’re dead now but because their bodies are buried in Hull and I’m in Virginia. I guess I had to leave Hull to really appreciate it. Many of the things I’ve experienced in the last twenty years, I can’t imagine having happened if I had stayed in Hull–like home schooling my boys, learning to grow and can my own food, learning to contra dance, make herbal remedies, live in a bus, vend my own jewelry at Grateful Dead shows, or jump into a hole in the ice naked after a sauna. Who would I be now if I never left? If I never moved to Texas, how would Danny’s life have been different?
I dream of Hull the way I imagine my Grandmother dreamt of her homeland in Youhal, Ireland. I have a re-occurring dream of walking the length of Hull, the way we used to as kids when we would spend all our money, including our bus fare, at Hull’s amusement park (Paragon Park) and had no way home but to walk. I think I’m the only kid in my family, or all of Hull for that matter, who grew up when “Paragon” was still there and never rode on the roller coaster. I always played it safe. Not like my reckless brothers.
Danny kept newspaper clippings of some of his friend’s obituaries taped to the posts of the entertainment center that he built. One was of a friend he grew up with who died of Hepatitis C, another was a friend who died of a drug overdose. One of the eeriest things I found in Dan’s apartment was a picture he had taken of a friend’s grave in the Hull Village Cemetery. It was directly behind the very spot where Jimmy was now buried, the same place where Dan was also destined to be.
Danny and I had a shared dream of buying a beach front condo in Hull, so we could both spend extended time there. I’m still in Virginia, but Danny is home now. If you stand at his grave, lean forward and look to the left, all the way down Duck Lane, you can see the ocean.
Two More Boys
Matty likes firemen. Patrick likes Godzilla. My mother and father were overwhelmed with us kids when we were growing up, and then most all their grandchildren came at once. Matthew and Patrick, our youngest sister Tricia’s kids, came much later and have been the blessing of my parent’s golden years.
I try to remember what Jim and Dan liked as little boys, but my sisters and I were so wrapped up in our “girl culture,” our paper dolls and Barbies, that it’s hard to recall what the boys were doing. They ate a lot of cereal and watched The Three Stooges on television. Jimmy hit rocks with a stick at the beach for hours or sometimes hit a ball against the house which would usually cause my Dad to yell. Danny used to wake me up early to go down to the pantry and sneak cookies before anyone else was awake. I got in trouble because I was older, so I remember the injustice I felt about that (it wasn’t my idea!) more than the memory of Danny.
Our family likes to talk about Jim and Dan now because every memory shared is like a new memory we all can own. The noisy ruckus coming off my mother’s “A Street” porch during the funeral weeks was almost embarrassing. Aren’t we supposed to be mourning? When you get us all together, it can be loud, not because we’re not getting along but because we are. We sent Patrick in to sit on Poppa’s lap and watch television with him because it cheers Poppa up. The trade off was that my dad (Poppa) would have to watch Godzilla. Even I sat with Patrick watching old B-movie Godzilla scenes (which–come to think of it–reminds me of young Jim) just to be close to his sweetness.
“Patrick thinks his Uncle Jimmy is an astronaut now,” Tricia told me when my husband and sons and I were at her house to have dinner. We were in the yard, and I couldn’t help notice a child’s life-sized motorcycle that was sitting on the top of a picnic table, tied down with rope.
“What’s that for?” I asked. “I don’t know. Ask Matty,” Trish answered with a glint in her eye.
I never did find out what the motorcycle was tied up for, but seeing it sure did cheer me up.
__________Colleen Redman / Read earlier chapters of The Jim and Dan Stories HERE.
-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on October 31, 2019.
Close to 100 parishioners and guests attended the Bluemont Presbyterian Church’s 100th year anniversary on Sunday October 20th. The celebration included a dedication to the expansion of the congregation’s fellowship hall, located just behind the church.
Along the Blue Ridge Parkway, on the border of Patrick and Carroll County, the Bluemont is one of the historic rock churches that Reverend Bob Childress, The Man Who Moved a Mountain, had a hand in constructing. Built of wood in 1919 through the efforts of fifteen charter members, the church was faced with fieldstone in the mid 1940’s.
Ken Ivy, a church elder who oversaw the fellowship hall expansion, addressed the crowd in front of the renovated building following Sunday morning church services. “This is a great day to celebrate our past – our 100 years – as we look back and see where we’ve come and who we are. It’s also important to look forward,” he said, in reference to the hall expansion, which doubled the width of the building from 16 x 16 feet to 16 x 32 and added a kitchen and bathrooms.
Ivy thanked all involved in the construction expansion, saying, “a lot of people put a lot of work into it,” before asking, Reverend Stewart Childress, a third-generation Childress pastor, to say a few words. Childress, who was the church’s pastor for 15 years before recently retiring, referred to the first dedication of the fellowship hall building in 2008, before its expansion.
“On that day, I stated that this sacred place was being set apart for the furthering of God’s kingdom here on earth, and I’m confident as we dedicate this new addition that it will further enhance that continued commitment,” he said.
Childress read from a photo montage to be hung in the building, honoring Cecil and Pauline Cock, who were instrumental in getting the original hall built. Ivy read from a plaque commemorating the new dedication: “This new building is dedicated glory of God for the purpose of Christian fellowship and ministry. We gratefully acknowledge the vison of everyone who made this day possible. We recognize all those who have generously contributed gifts of their time and financial support.”
The church’s interim pastor, Reverend Loren Mitchell, led the group in prayer before a ceremonious ribbon cutting. Inside the renovated building, the full-house hall was used for the first time for fellowship, potluck feasting, watching a slide show of the church’s history and listening to scheduled speakers.
Reverend Childress, who enjoyed the fellowship luncheon with his wife and mother, said he was only 3 ½ when his grandfather Bob Childress Sr. died and only remembers being held by his mother or grandmother at his grandfather’s funeral. Childress’s late father, Bob Childress Jr., served as pastor of Bluemont from 1975 – 1996. His uncle, Bryan Childress, also served as a Bluemont pastor.
Pat Spangler (pointing out where the county line is and the continental divide), whose family has roots in Floyd County, grew up in Meadows of Dan where he attended Bluemont’s sister church, the Mayberry Presbyterian Church, also off the Blue Ridge Parkway, just north of the Bluemont. Spangler recalled that when he was a child, his
aunt and uncle housed Bob Childress Sr. in their home when he traveled from Richmond to Patrick County. Spangler and his wife spend part of the year in Florida, where he was a Geology professor, and part of the year in Fancy Gap. They still attend the Mayberry church when they are home.
“This little church has been going on for so long. We want to make sure it continues,” said Bluemont parishioner elder Libby Wilcox. Wilcox, who helped with the fellowship hall expansion, pointed out the words on the 100th Year Anniversary Program, “Sharing Christ From the Mountaintop.” “That’s our new mission statement,” she said.
-A version of the following first appeared in The Floyd Press on October 31, 2019. –Whether you took a spooky elevator ride or the stairs up to the Floyd Center for the Arts (FCA) Community Room, you and over 100 kids and their parents had fun at Sunday afternoon’s Halloween Kid Fest. One of the oldest FCA annual events, the Kid Fest is 19 years old.
The only event older is Winterfest, which is set to mark its 25th year in December.
You don’t have to buy anything at the Kid Fest. Tricks and treats are free to the public. One-hundred pumpkins were donated by Sinkland Farms for the children to paint. Other activities included a Halloween spider-web blindfold game, Halloween bag decorating and jack o’lanterns full of creepy crawlies to touch and feel.
FCA program director Becky Lattuca described the Kid Fest as a community outreach event. “It brings families in and gets the kids comfortable here. They come year-after-year and then suddenly they’re here for a different reason. We want it to feel like their center. We’re not just an art gallery,” she said.
The center’s mission is“to facilitate and showcase artistic endeavors and creativity and to provide education in the arts throughout our rural community and region.” Currently the Center is showcasing three exhibits through November 30, New Work, Elephant in the Room and Peak Creek.
Upcoming classes at the Center include Beeswax Batik, Bookmaking and Watercolor Painting. Upcoming events include the Winterfest Arts and Craft Festival and the Festival of Trees (December 7 and 8) and a Home for the Holidays concert with the Wiley family (David and Leah and son Misha) and the Bouknights (Philip and Tara) on December 22.
Treats at the Halloween Kid Fest were donated by the community. Alea Lacoste, who was one of three ACE (Access to Community College for Everyone) volunteers at the event, baked ghost cupcakes for the occasion. There were also chocolate broomsticks and cookies topped with chocolate witch hats.
Virginia Tech and Radford University students also volunteered at the Halloween Kid Fest. A costume parade, spooky decorations and a photo booth (with free printed out pictures) rounded out the festivities.
It’s the best therapy in the world, dancing to the Grateful Dead tunes of The Kind. Doing it in Halloween costumes at our long-loved Pine Tavern only adds to the high point experience.
And I found out who Yoda was at the Dogtown party the night before! It pays to be persistent. Thumbs up for yes. Thumbs down for no. Are you a girl? She was. That was all I could get out of her at Dogtown.
Check out my sister cat bookends!
Can you guess who my friend Michelle is with?
Brian was into it!
Dancing to The Kind is my happy place! And I’m not the only one.
Joe and I left after the first set, which was one of the best I’ve ever heard/danced to, because Joe had a mountain bike ride with Tour Du Dirt the next morning.
So we missed the traditional Costume Party. My bet was on my friend Holly as Tippi Hendren in the movie The Birds. What a fright!
But there were lots of possibilities!
See Party #1 HERE.
Out with my Boo @ Dogtown for Halloween!
Joe and I weren’t the only butterflies! This one is dancing to DJ Robbie’s mix before Music Road Company hit the stage.
Dogtown is known for it’s excellent pizza!
And Halloween is known for witches. 
I offered anyone a free beer if they could figure out who Yoda was.
The band was in top form and dressed in ’60s hippie flair.
There was a costume contest for prizes. Austin Powers didn’t bring his mini me.
I didn’t recognize my friend Logan for the longest time because he stayed in Dracula character!
Not sure what our friend Mark was dressed as because that’s how he looks in regular life, but we liked his little dance for the costume contest as the judges looked on. All the contestants performed little dances.
These mischievous minions brought a real dog!
The Incredibles super hero lady won first place in the costume contest. Our Yoda came in second. I never found out who it was and never got any jedi advise from the sage.
Now we’re gearing up for a costume change for Halloween Party #2, tonight with the Kind at the Pine Tavern. What a life!
Halloween Party #2 is HERE. / Our World Tuesday
1. Making THIS is not as easy as it looks.
2. What if Dear Abby’s name was Prudence?
3. Ah or Ha?
4. A smile is an instant face-lift.
5. Smiling can trick your brain into happiness — and boost your health. A smile spurs a powerful chemical reaction in the brain that can make you feel happier. Science has shown that the mere act of smiling can lift your mood, lower stress, boost your immune system and possibly even prolong your life. And it doesn’t matter is the smile is real or not. – More HERE.
6. My nine-year-old grandson Liam said, “that’s pretty good” after I read him THIS poem.
7. What can I say? I feel compelled to dance and compelled to record the occasion. We got the $10 show price at Dogtown. They paid $30 the night before and more than that, I suspect, when she opened for Lee Ann Womack this month… “I do not have a record out yet, so I do not have one for sale,” she said, adding that the record she made with Sadler Vaden (of the Jason Isbell band) is done, but the record label offers haven’t been decided yet. “I’ve spent the last three weeks saying that every night. I don’t have one yet. I’ll tell you that and there you go,” she told the crowd. So, no Christmas presents for you and for you, yet. And it seems that her first record, Puppets with My Heart, is out of stock… More from Hometown Welcome for Morgan Wade HERE.
8. Best line seen on Facebook this week: “Does this shirt make my accent show?” Yes, it was Morgan. She posted a country western shirt selfie.
9. I have no idea / like I know we all die / but don’t know how or when / What will we do till then? – Read The Last Poem I’ll Ever Write in its entirety HERE.
10. I have decided to share my book, The Jim and Dan Stories, chapter by chapter, to have it available online, since it is no longer available in print. The book, which was used in a Radford University grief and loss class for counseling students, is part an account of my brothers last weeks and their deaths a month apart, part memoir of growing up together on the South Shore of Boston in a large Irish Catholic family of 11, and part a chronicle of coping with the first six months of life-altering grief. I’m posting a chapter every Wednesday until the book is done. I added a new side bar category “Jim and Dan Stories” on the blog (to the right) for easy access.
11. Writing a blog reminds me of keeping a journal when my son home-schooled. It didn’t look like much schoolwork was happening, but when I wrote down what we did at the end of the day, it showed how much cool stuff actually happens in one day.
12. “The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them.”- Stephen King
13. Monster or Mobster?
____________Thirteen Thursday
The last few weeks of my brother’s lives played out like the conclusion of a dramatic Hollywood script, a plot with a twist. The road trip they took, two weeks before the first death, became the beginning of a larger journey, the one in which they would both leave this world.
I have decided to share my book, The Jim and Dan Stories, chapter by chapter, to have it available online, since it is no longer available in print. The book, which was used in a Radford University grief and loss class for counseling students, is part an account of my brothers last weeks and their deaths a month apart, part memoir of growing up together on the South Shore of Boston in a large Irish Catholic family of 11, and part a chronicle of coping with the first six months of life-altering grief. It is not dense reading, about 150 pages, broken up into short chapters made up of several short vignettes. I plan to post a chapter every Wednesday until the book is done. I added a new side bar category “Jim and Dan Stories” on the blog (to the right) for easy access and because some might want read it all in one sitting.
2.
A Black Cow in a Dark Night
Driving down Route 8 in the town of Floyd, going 50 miles an hour, I hit a cow. I was in my ’87 Honda with the license plate that says “Let it be.” That’s the name of the song we sang to Danny the morning of his death. For though we may be parted… there is still a chance that we will see….There will be an answer….Let it be. It was night and the cow was black. I never saw it coming, the way Jimmy never saw the machine part that pinned him against the wall until it was too late. The impact of the cow’s body shattered the windshield and dented the hood, but the car still ran. Sort of like breaking a leg and not like losing the function of a liver, like Dan did. I remember Dan’s liver doctor talking to me about using kidney dialysis to help Dan’s failing kidneys kick back. “It’s like putting new brakes in a car when you really need a new transmission. Don’t get your hopes up,” he said.
I wanted to pass right over the cow problem and continue on to my destination, but I had to wait for the State Police, get some phone numbers, and a new ride. The destination that I finally did reach was a celebration at The Pine Tavern for a group of friends who were all born in 1951 and who were turning, or had just turned, fifty. People there came up to me to offer insurance advice or to say, “I’m sorry about your accident, hitting the cow.” I guess not many knew I had just lost two brothers and that the cow was the least of my problems. This was my first big night out since my brother’s back-to-back deaths. I sat with a friend who I knew had recently lost her mother and who was able to be present for her mother’s last breath, as I was for Dan’s, feeling not so out of place with her. I was able to tell her that Danny was just about to turn 50 and would have if he had lived just one month more.
Later at home, I emailed my brothers and sisters the cow story, feeling sad at how shortened my family email list had become without Dan and Jim on it. I especially missed being able to tell Jim, who always got a kick out of oddball life stories.
Dan’s Birthday Present
Coming from a working class, Irish Catholic family of eleven, pets were not a priority, and so the majority of the Redman family were not avid pet lovers. Danny was an exception. We knew Dan loved his cat, Winslow, but we didn’t know how much until we lived in his Texas apartment (my mother, sister, sister-in-law and I) during his last weeks. Special cat brushes, gourmet cat food, and hordes of cat toys were everywhere. We took turns scooping the cat’s poop from the litter box into the toilet. We pet him, when he let us, to ease his loneliness for Dan. We brought a picture of Winslow for Dan’s hospital bulletin board and always included “Winslow News” (along with news of the Red Sox, who were losing ground right along with Dan) in our updates, when Dan was awake enough to listen. Even I was beginning to like Winslow.
After Danny died, arrangements were made for Winslow to stay with a friend of Dan’s until a family member could come back with a U-haul to close Dan’s apartment down. Eventually, Winslow made the trip from Houston to Boston, with a stopover in Virginia to spend the night hiding in my woodpile, ending up in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where he was lovingly adopted by my younger brother Bobby and his family.
Bobby’s wife, Jeanne, tells the rest of the story in an email message: “Winslow was fitting in quite nicely and seemed happy. On Saturday night he slept with me (a first). On Sunday he spent time on each person’s lap (another first). Sunday around 4:30 he suddenly ran out of the house (as if someone called him). We found him the next morning on October 7th–Danny’s birthday–dead. There were no visible injuries.”
Every day I walk to the mailbox and pass an empty can of cat food that was left in the driveway from when Winslow was here. I leave it there as a marker of all that has happened.
Two Brothers, Two Towers, Two Sons
Death is a season rather than a single date. I hadn’t been home from the last funeral for even a week when the terrorist attack on the U.S. took place–September 11, 2001. Two towers came down, one right after the other like my brothers did, killing over 3,000 innocent people. Now the whole country was in grief. Maybe I wouldn’t stick out so, like a sore thumb. I felt grateful that we had our brother’s bodies. We could say goodbye to their dead faces, touch their hair that still felt real. I even know where they are now. It’s a mystery to me why a vacant body is so important, but it is. I couldn’t imagine my brothers trapped under rubble, lost in pieces. I wonder if any of the families involved in the 9/11 devastation lost more than one loved one.
Grieving two brothers at the same time is awkward. Something about it reminds me of raising my two sons. My love and commitment for each is not a question, but I still try to be fair, not wanting one to feel slighted or to think I’m playing favorites. Now I’m crying for Dan…now for Jim…now for both. It’s hard to separate. Grief is a self-conscious process. It creates a thin veil between what is seen and what is unseen. I feel watched by Jimmy and Danny, just as I can imagine what they would be saying or doing now.
I miss talking to Dan about the recent world events. We were only one year apart in age and had similar interests and tastes. Dan and I could talk easily about sex, music, spirituality, or politics. I knew better than to talk to Jim about politics. He could blast me in one breath, “YOUR LOSING IT, COLLEEN. GET SOME REST!” and praise me in the next, “…I’m very proud to have a sister like you” (after reading something I had written). The September 11th attack was an oddball event of the greatest magnitude. Even Jimmy would be talking.
My sons were born in Texas. Danny followed me there in the late 70’s when he needed to turn over a new leaf. He always measured the length of his time in Texas by my son Josh’s birthday, 22 this year. Nineteen years ago he became my son Dylan’s Godfather. Unlike Jim, Dan had no kids of his own and was never married, but he was still a family man, as Jim was. Danny always made his nieces and nephews a priority in his life. It was fitting that my sons, along with Dan’s other nephews, lovingly carried his body during his funeral services, as Jim’s brothers carried his. It was fitting that Dan had three ministering women, more than some men with wives, at his death, and more young people crying at his funeral than some fathers might have.
The White Feather
It was a perfect white feather that must have just fallen, but it seemed to have been placed in my path just for me. I was walking on the beach in Hull, the beach that Jimmy so often took storm photographs of, trying to gather my strength for his funeral and thinking of the eulogy I was to give. I found myself picking up that feather to save in my pocket and then later putting it with Jim’s body when I said my last goodbye. For me, it represented other-world, freedom, and purity.
Weeks later, we were facing the worst with Dan in the hospital, an unlikely place for a white feather to show up, but it did. Jeanne pulled it out of her pocketbook (not knowing about the white feather I left with Jim’s body), saying her daughter had given it to her. We called ourselves “the three ministering Mary’s,” Jeanne, my sister Kathy, and myself, tending Danny at his deathbed, the way Mary Magdalene, Mother Mary and her cousin did for Jesus. That was when it occurred to me that death faced willingly, and especially after suffering, was a sort of sacrifice and a generator of grace. And didn’t Danny say “I’m all right” the first chance he got when the breathing tubes came off, the way Jesus said “Forgive them, Father,” comforting us when he was dying?
We anointed him with “Three Wise Men Oil” that my aroma-therapist sister, Kathy, had brought. We placed the white feather on his pillow next to the pin of Mother Mary that an anonymous late night visitor had left there. When I find myself in times of trouble… Mother Mary comes to me… speaking words of wisdom… Let it be. The nurse removed the breathing tubes when Dan signaled he was ready, like taking Jesus down from the cross he was nailed to. After he died, I placed the feather safely in my journal to keep in remembrance of his passing, but later, when I went to retrieve it, it was gone.
Family friends arranged for a funeral reception at the Hull Yacht club, which was a stone’s throw away from where the house we all grew up in used to be. My husband, Joe, took a picture of Jeanne, Kathy, and I at the bandstand gazebo on the lawn. On the way over to the bandstand Jeanne picked up a white feather and gave it to me.
“You better take good care of this one,” Joe said.
“No, this one can go where ever it wants to,” I answered. After holding it awhile, I passed it back to Jeanne who wore it as an earring.
Weeks later, when that picture was developed, I was shocked to read above our heads in bold letters “DAN S MEMORIAL.” My Massachusetts sisters and mom drove down to the yacht club to take a second look. It actually said “DAN SHORT’S MEMORIAL BANDSTAND,” but in our picture some of the words were cut off.
Thanksgiving
The leaves are falling as fast as the words in my head are spilling onto paper. A squirrel scampers by and a sense of urgency fills the air. I must get this all down. Tie this together. I must think harder to recover memories of Danny and Jim that I can lavish in. I have an impatience to do it all now. Death is a real motivating force. It teaches us that we don’t have forever. Understanding our own mortality is an opportunity, urging us to re-set priorities.
After seeing death close up, it’s hard to write shopping lists or want to sweep the floor. I want to keep writing checks to The Salvation Army with Dan’s name on them, keep pasting Jim’s weather pictures into colorful books. I want to meditate on death and be of service to others.
It’s almost Thanksgiving and my family will gather together at my brother Joey’s house in Hanover, Massachusetts. “Jimmy always brought the mashed potatoes,” Joey’s wife Nancy said with tears in her eyes when she and Joey passed through here with Winslow. Jimmy never missed a holiday gathering, a family birthday party, a basketball game his daughter was playing in, or any family event, which I know will make his absence on Thanksgiving even harder for my family to bear.
When Jimmy was visiting me in Virginia this past July, he talked about his machine shop job and even that metal milling machine, the one that would kill him (I should have been taking notes). He also talked light-heartedly about a lone wild turkey that would visit the bird feeder outside the shop where he worked. A wild turkey is a rare thing where Jim lived, and it was probably the first time he saw one. After Jim died, I was at his house looking through some photographs he had taken. I saw a close-up of a turkey at a bird feeder and knew it was the one! I looked up “turkey” in an animal totem book and learned that the turkey represents a give-away, a sacrifice, or a gift, to Native Americans. I couldn’t help but look at the turkey and see an omen in it, or at least a good totem for Jim.
A turkey would be a great totem for Jim for another reason. His birthday was November 22 and would sometimes fall on Thanksgiving, as it will this year. I remember as a girl “Jim’s birthday on Thanksgiving” was the only time I was not interested in cake, not after all the turkey and fixings! I was always confused back then about why his birthday wasn’t always on Thanksgiving.
The words are winding down (for now) as memories of past Thanksgivings drift through my mind. Like a favorite dream I am trying to reconstruct, I superimpose those memories over the harsh reality, which is this: There are empty chairs at the table this year, and never has emptiness been so concrete. – Colleen Redman
_________Read earlier chapters of The Jim and Dan Stories HERE.
What can I say? I feel compelled to dance and compelled to record the occasion.
We got the $10 show price at Dogtown. They paid $30 the night before and more than that, I suspect, when she opened for Lee Ann Womack this month.
A lot has happened since Morgan first debuted her songs on the Dogtown stage around 2013. See Local Musician Called Up to the Big Leagues HERE. And HERE is an early days clip.
“I do not have a record out yet, so I do not have one for sale,” she said, adding that the record she made with Sadler Vaden (of the Jason Isbell band) is done, but the record label offers haven’t been decided yet. “I’ve spent the last three weeks saying that every night. I don’t have one yet. I’ll tell you that and there you go,” she told the crowd. So, no Christmas presents for you and for you, yet. And it seems that her first record, Puppets with My Heart, is out of stock.
Apart from Floyd’s own Joe Link on keyboard, the rockin’ band she played with is from Damascus, where she stays on her way to and from Nashville, where she’s moving to. The lead guitarist’s son on drums was only 14. The band from Maine, Chris Ross and the North, that opened for Morgan was really good too. I hope they come back to Dogtown.
I really wanted to upload and post one of the few newest songs that she sang, but the album isn’t out yet, so no can do. This song (above) is a from Puppets and the band does it justice.
It was a sold-out show and the crowd was rowdy, proud of the hometown girl. I was glad she sang a few solo songs that she doesn’t sing much anymore, like Kelly’s Drive, an all-time favorite emotional tearjerker that makes me feel sentimental. And I’m not the only one.
______Our World Tuesday
It’s just talking
It’s just thinking
then writing it down on paper
I don’t know how to write a poem
I don’t know what a poem is
I always think the poem I’m working on
is the last one I’ll ever write
I have no idea
like I know we all die
but don’t know how or when
What will we do till then?
I just wasted a good title
that I won’t use again
for poems that do as they please
with or without me
___________Colleen Redman / Poets United
-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on October 24, 2019.
There is an actual cabin at the Cabin Fever Charity events on Coles Knob Road along Terry’s Fork creek. It’s the home of event founders, Rob and Whitney Maddox. The couple have been hosting benefits that feature the best in local musical talent on their property for seven years. Started as a way to memorialize Kevin Dodson, a loved one who passed away in 2012, the Cabin Fever events are also fundraisers for good causes.
“We had about 60 people come out the first year for Kevin, so we said, let’s just keep it going and work for good causes,” Rob Maddox said. He estimated about 200 came out for last year’s event and Saturday’s Fall Fling looked to match or top that number.
In year’s past, the Maddoxes raised money for Saint Francis Service Dogs, a non-profit organization out of Roanoke that raises, trains, and places service dogs. This year their “good cause” is raising money for the Floyd County Humane Society’s (FCHS) building fund. The society is currently renting limited kennel space to hold animals that are waiting for adoption, and they aren’t able to get government grants or financial assistance without a brick and mortar location. All proceeds from a raffle, a silent and live auction, a coffee bar and food tent, merchandise and donations will go directly to the FCHS building fund.
“There’s going to be dogs,” Maddox said at the check in gate. Cabin Fever is not only a dog-friendly event, dogs are encouraged to come. “Bring your dog across Ellie Mae’s rainbow bridge (a footbridge that crosses Terry’s Fork onto the Maddox property) and a $25 donation will be made in your honor,” the event press release read.
One attendee joked, “I haven’t see a cat, unless it’s up a tree.” But FCHS board member Carol Moates said the society has brought cat rescues – kept in cages in a separate part of the event site – to past Cabin Fevers.
Moates was walking a rescue dog looking to be adopted with her husband Tom and Amy Helm. Helm, who does weekend fostering for the FCHS, was walking a cocker spaniel named Milky Way. Moates explained that the society really needs people who will foster the dogs that are kept in cages while waiting to be adopted, or even just take them for walks. “It can make or break a dog’s personality,” she said, adding that the organization needs volunteers of all kinds and is hoping for a donation of land. 
Saturday’s partly sunny warm weather was a great backdrop to the early fall fun, where playing children were as plentiful as attendee lawn chairs and dogs on site.
Chris Link and Shane Edgell, formerly of the Deer Run Drifters, hit the Wish You Were Here stage just after noon.
The pair followed a “murder suicide drinking song” with a Link original about his family. “…I’m proud to be / from an old Baptist family / Daddy still works / My mamma prays / Me and my brothers are still rough around the edges / That’s just a trailer park family name /Damn sure take pride in your family name…”
Acts that followed also showcased original songwriting. Junior Varsity featured Jodie Norton on mandolin and Will Norton playing guitar and singing his original songs, written in the tradition of honest/humorous storytelling.
After poking fun at everyone in a song about Floyd, Norton sang, “I’ve been living here long enough to know / there’s no place I’d rather be / But we still have a long way to go….”
Virginia Hollow features the original songwriting of Carrie Hinkley, described online as “mountain songs and stories of love, trust, betrayal and longing,” with Sue Winchester on stand-up bass and Dave Fason on guitar. The group performed a song that the band was named after “…Tears will fall on your pillow / at night when you’re alone / You can bring my favorite flowers / the ones from all roadsides / they only bloom in the springtime / down in Virginia Hollow….
Other acts that performed until after 10:00 included Paul Rilee, JAMS (Junior Appalachian musicians), Seph Custer, Cocobolo featuring original songs by Stella Bean and more.
Check out Cabin Fever’s Facebook page or visit their webpage to see how to donate to the FCHS building fund. To learn more about the work of Floyd’s Humane Society go HERE.
PHOTOS -1. The Maddox’s mountain cabin was the inspiration behind the name Cabin Fever and sits overlooking the event site. 2. Cabin Fever co-founder Rob Maddox and FCHS volunteer Mary Weeks at the event check-in. 3. A wood carving by Lanny Bean was one of the items auctioned off at the event. 4. Jackie and Roy Shipman brought their great dane name Zeus. 5. Kids at play at the family friendly event. 6. Members of FCHS walked dogs that need adoption. Pictured are FCHS board member Carol Moates (center) flanked by Tom Moates and Amy Helms. 7. A FCHS volunteer straightens a pastel painting that was painted and donated to the FCHS by artist Gretchen St. Lawrence for the fundraiser. 8. Sean Edgell on banjo and Chris Link on guitar perform a Link original song. The pair invited guests on stage to sing with them during their set. 9. Will and Jody Norton are Junior Varsity. 10. Virginia Hollow performs on the Wish You Were Here stage. 11. Veiw from the cabin porch. 12. Maddox’s dog Keeper, who spends a big part of his day in the creek.
1. Hang up or hang out?
2. Tense or intense?
3. Line seen on Facebook: Halloween is my favorite color.
4. Also seen on Facebook: The proper term for senior women should be queenagers.
5. Strand by Strand / her world closes in / By her own design / she hangs by a thread.
6. We were asked to be present to an evening that will never happen again. We were asked not to take photos or video clips at the Nights of Grief and Mystery, so this is for memory. But it’s a true story and it really happened, as Griefwalker Stephen Jenkinson likes to preface some of his storytelling. And storyteller he is. In a testament to living language, Stephen’s stories embody no advice, no soundbites, no sugarcoating or preaching, no facts and information, just his human-lived experience told in his own words, words like poetry that hit a human chord of truth and show that more than one reality can exist at the same time, and they don’t cancel each other out. It’s hard to describe what the Nights of Grief and Mystery are. There’s a band, storytelling and readings in an atmosphere of intimacy and honesty. I know I laughed loudly. I know I cried from deep within and danced in my seat a few times. “Cognitive dissonance, a love letter for grown-ups, the dark road headed out of town,” are a few of the ways that Stephan has described it. – More from THIS STORY IS TRUE AND IT REALLY HAPPENED HERE.
7. A Frightful Fall: Wrinkled with age / Some cackle as they fall / from broomstick branches / on bony bare limbs / outstretched like arms / that could grab you
8. “A good death is everyone’s right. The idea makes no sense in a culture that doesn’t believe in dying at all. Grief is the radical etiquette needed by a death phobic, grief illiterate time. Dying is the fulfillment, not the end, of life.” Stephen Jenkinson
9. The Battle of the Bulge is not about a diet. My dad actually fought in it.
10. Here’s a poem from the 1960s by Aram Saroyan: lighght Yes, that’s the whole poem. – More HERE.
11. “How reading rewires your brain for greater intelligence and empathy: One 2009 study of 72 children ages eight to ten discovered that reading creates new white matter in the brain, which improves system-wide communication… reading does in fact make us more intelligent. Research shows that reading not only helps with fluid intelligence, but with reading comprehension and emotional intelligence as well. You make smarter decisions about yourself and those around you… All of these benefits require actually reading, which leads to the formation of a philosophy rather than the regurgitation of an agenda…”
12. “Novels consume time and attention. While the benefits are worthwhile, even shorter bursts of prose exhibit profound neurological effects. Poetry elicits strong emotional responses in readers and, as one study shows, listeners. Heart rates, facial expressions, and “movement of their skin and arm hairs” were measured while participants listened to poetry. Forty percent ended up displaying visible goose bumps, as they would while listening to music or watching movies. As for their craniums: Their neurological responses, however, seemed to be unique to poetry: Scans taken during the study showed that listening to the poems activated parts of participants’ brains that, as other studies have shown, are not activated when listening to music or watching films.” More HERE.
13. When your high beams are marigold and zinnia HERE.
_________Thirteen Thursday
Following the posting of THIS poem about my sister’s death in 2015, I received a few comments on this blog and on Facebook asking about my brothers Jim and Dan’s back to back deaths, which happened in 2001. I actually wrote a book about it that was used for years as part of a Radford University curriculum in a grief and loss class for counseling students, but the book has largely been out of print for nearly a decade now. I only have about six copies left of the nearly 1,000 that were printed. There is lots of writing on this blog about losing Jim and Dan and others in my family, which can be found on the Losing a Loved One side bar category, but, after thinking about it, I decided to post the first chapter of the book. It wasn’t written as part of the book, but serves to set up the story. It was originally written for the Floyd community newsletter, A Museletter and was published in my hometown paper, The Hull Times as a tribute. It became a jumping off point for the book, The Jim and Dan Stories, which is part an account of my brothers last weeks and their deaths a month apart (which played out like Hollywood script), part memoir of growing up together on the South Shore of Boston in a large Irish Catholic family of 11, and part a chronicle of the first six months of deep grief and coping with it.
1.
Grief and Faith
My brother Jim’s abrupt, accidental death shook my faith to the core. Every New Age and Catholic childhood belief I ever had came into question. My brother Dan’s death, just a month after Jim’s, restored my faith. I watched Dan go purely and on his own terms after his body would no longer do the simplest of tasks. For me, Jim’s death was better understood in its higher purpose only after Dan died. But whether the death of a loved one comes with understanding and faith or not, the grief is the same. I’m thankful for my grief, which is also my deepening. I’m reminded of what Wendell Berry said about grief in his book “Jayber Crow,” “One by one we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time. One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us treasured up in our hearts. Grief affirms them. Preserves them. Sets the cost.”
The Two Journeys
Dan led the physical trip. He was sick and was on the list for a liver transplant. He wanted to spend time with his older brother, Jim, a single parent who had not been away from home since he was stationed in Korea during the Vietnam War. He wanted Jim to see some of the country, while also creating some good memories for himself, because he knew in the back of his mind that their road trip might be his last. Even though their travels were cut slightly short due to Dan’s illness, Jim fulfilled many of the goals he made for that trip–seeing Atlantic City, Washington D.C., The Gulf of Mexico, visiting me in Virginia, exploring the Dixie Caverns, having a reunion with a favorite cousin he hadn’t seen in 20 years, playing golf with my husband. Jimmy was killed in a tragic machine shop accident two weeks after returning home. My family and I were comforted knowing that Jim, who was often vocal about the struggles in his life, had some last good memories and left this world on a positive note.
Jim led the spiritual trip. He had the same liver disease that Danny did, but it was not progressed to the same degree. He had a hard time seeing Dan so sick and feeling as if he were viewing what could be in store for him. But that wasn’t to be. It seemed that on some unconscious level Jim decided to check out early. Did he sacrifice what time he had left by going first, always the big brother?
Jim’s funeral brought Dan, who was living in Texas, back home to Massachusetts to see his immediate and extended family, and many of his friends, one last time before his own death. Although Dan had not recovered from the earlier trip he took with Jim, he mustered the strength to be a pallbearer for his brother and to receive the love and attention that was showered on him by family and friends. Jim’s death created a physical resting place for Dan, as burial plots are bought in pairs. Danny, who had thought he wanted to be cremated, changed his mind after Jim died and spoke with relief at knowing he had a final resting place with his brother if his liver transplant fell through, a place where all nine of us Redman kids had played together while growing up, the Hull Village Cemetery.
We also feel that Jim created a spiritual place for Dan as our sister-in-law, Jeanne, a hospice nurse, asked Danny the morning of his death if he had seen Jim. Danny nodded “Yes.”
I miss both my brothers terribly, but I’m glad they have each other.
The Gift of Grace
Watching someone take their last breath is an intimate life passage, not so unlike birth, with lots of swaying, praying, comforting, and waiting. When a person bravely faces their own death (especially after suffering), a grace is born that can be felt by those present. I was supported by that grace throughout Dan’s funeral services, but because I have since learned that the energy of grace can wear off, I like to remind myself of the gifts that Dan gave me in his last weeks.
. He gave me the gift of bringing my brother Jim to visit me in Virginia and the precious last memories I now have of that.
. He gave me the gift of realizing my parent’s profound and loving appreciation (what child ever has enough of that?) for myself and my sisters for flying to Texas to be by Dan’s side till the end.
. He gave me the gift of learning firsthand that service to others is not draining and that when serving others we are given the resources to do what is needed for however long it is needed. Because I have lived with chronic fatigue for twenty-five years, this was an important lesson.
. Learning how loved, how irreplaceable and how talented Dan was from his Texas friends and co-workers gave me a new awareness and appreciation for him.
. Witnessing Dan’s battle to live and then his bravery in facing his own death made me want to be a better person. It gave me an unshakable knowledge of the reality of impermanence and a model of acceptance that I can take to my own death.
. His softening and receptivity to our caring for him filled me with gratitude. For such a stubbornly independent guy this was truly a touching gift.
. He gave me the gift of restored faith in what is unseen and holy, as I witnessed the visions, conversations, and support he was experiencing in the final hours of his life from what/who was unseen to the rest of us.
The heartbreaking loss of my brothers has given my whole family the gift of deepening the bonds we share. We have been strengthened by the loving support of so many wonderful people who have come to our aid. Our grief has taught us what is the most important and powerful thing in life: Love.
The Weatherman and the Humanitarian
“How many old cars did Jimmy rust out while following storms?” Father Joe asked, lightening the mood at Jim’s funeral. The Weather Man…Observer of the world…Transformed in a flash…Like the tongues of lightening licking the sky…Spliced in with All That Is…Listen to his whispers in the rain…Look for his essence in the patterns all around you… are lines from the poem that Jeanne wrote and recited at the cemetery.
Jimmy’s love of weather was notorious. He kept meticulously detailed weather records dating as far back as high school. When he was seven years old, my mother watched as he rigged up a red string to a stick in the yard. “What are you doing, Jim?” she asked. “I’m seeing which way the wind is blowing!” he informed her. He wrote narrative weather observations, got several of his weather photographs published, and volunteered giving tours at the weather observatory that sits atop Great Blue Hill in Milton, Massachusetts. At the time of his death he was documenting a record breaking heat wave which broke the day after he died.
If Jim comes to us now in the weather, in the clouds and storms and waves that he so loved and documented, Dan comes to us through the homeless. When I see the underprivileged, I am reminded how Danny always left money in his truck ashtray to give to them. I remember Dan’s generosity and how he always tipped big in honor of our mother who worked hard as a waitress for forty years. I know of at least one woman, who was sometimes homeless, that Dan supported on a regular basis. She came to his deathbed, kissed him and said, “I love you, Dan.”
Dan’s legacy is the inspiration I now have to continue to help others in his memory. Jim’s legacy is to never lose my sense of wonder in nature. I look at the world now through the physical eyes that my brothers no longer have.
Flying the Plane
I sat with Dan for hours when he was too tired to talk at St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston. Sometimes he would gesture with his hand to “Come on,” which I knew meant, “Give me some news.”
Me: “Well, let’s see…I’m settled into your apartment now. I love the home you’ve made for yourself. I noticed you have pictures of your family all over.”
Dan: More gesturing.
Me: “Okay. I’m finding everything I need. This hospital is pretty comfortable, with a rest area and a decent cafeteria. It feels a little better than waiting in an airport, which I’ve been doing my share of lately. But then again, it does feel like we’re waiting for a plane (meaning Dan’s new liver which would be his ticket out of his suffering), doesn’t it Dan?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. That plane was never to arrive. It turned out that Dan was too sick to be a good candidate for a liver transplant and too weak to withstand the surgery.
Several weeks later, back at home in Virginia, my husband, Joe, seeing me writing, asks, “Are you writing a poem?”
“Well, sort of.” I answer. “But I may as well be flying a plane, trying to put this into words.”
After a few more tears, I wrote this all down. Then I went back to Joe, who I knew was beginning to worry about my despondency, and said, “Hey Joe, I’m beginning to fly the plane.” He knew what I meant.
And so, life does go on. – Colleen Redman
_______The book’s introduction is HERE. I’ll post chapter 2 next week.
