As Basque I have learned to understand this: It's very important to know what you're fighting for, especially if you were born fighting... and it's very important to know that when you fight for freedom there are particulars that make the fighting and the freedom more and more real if the battle scars refuse to fade.
I spent the last long months fighting for two things that I see as indicators of freedom: a new name and an unknown future.
First, I fought because names matter to me. Your name is like a little poem written about you, just you, never forget that. I wanted the name of my living grandmother because it is beautiful and worthy and so is she and so am I. I didn't return to my mother's maiden name (I am no longer a maiden). I returned instead to the Bay of Biscay and the Basque shepherding ancestry that taught me the wonky kind of Vizcarra shepherding that makes me valuable in my community. I returned to the name you cry out in a crowded room because you can trust there will be at least one Perez to answer! If you want something done, ask a Perez.
I kept part of the name my mother chose for me because it is a tangible connection to her hopes for me to be known and treated as a Pearl of great price. But the latter half I replaced.
Now my name is half and half: a lovely blend of whole creamy freedom-fighting sheep's milk Vizcarra Perez with even-keeled, transparent and staunchly imaginative Abigail Pearl.
But I also fought because of inheritance. I fought for the pennies scrimped and saved and passed on to me so lavishly by the woman whose name I let go.
That is why this poem goes here. It is about moving on because you have to, it is about death in general but my mother's mother dying in particular... Funny, I put it here around this exact time last year... so if you go back in the archives you'll see another story about it... I take it to be proof that a helpful poem has more than one use, more than one story to tell, and probably knows the future better than it's author.
As soon as they called to tell me she had died, I called the hospital and told them I wanted to see her body; I wanted to see her one last time. The voice on the other end said, "it will all be all right." And the hoping poem began there...
The hope poem
When you died you were wearing a pink nightgown and looking quite vulnerable as the rigor washed over you.
Your pale skin had a power over us, what was left
of your thinning hair refused to rest
against the pillow.
You were the dead with a bed head
and you would have laughed at yourself, the way you always had.
They said you weren’t alone, and I suspect
there may have been a nurse in the room when the last little bit of life fell
out of you, rolled across the floor in search of another haunt,
across the hall perhaps?
Maybe a memory of family lodged in the corner of your quiet little brain
finally showed itself
a picture of you with your sister
keeping you company.
Then eventually
we arrived, gathering like seagulls on the cliff
Standing over,
your little brittle body, like a precipice and we, forced to jump toward
(your) death,
our life,
Suddenly unsure of my wings,
I began asking the questions:
Who will I be
now that you
are gone?
What will I do with the voice that sounds like yours bouncing around
in my memory?
When I say your name again you will not answer;
Will I be angry in your absence? Will I be anything at all?
What do I want now that you are gone, after my desire for your love defined me, your presence filled spaces and now those spaces are like wounds:
You cut yourself
out of my skin,
You widdled the edges of my self coming close to you
wielding guilt like a pocket knife.
Though Love has cauterized the edges
The pain is real.
Disappointment threatens to move in like an infection
If we deny the Lacrimal disinfecting.
There is swelling and throbbing but there is no emptiness here.
We are full and heavy with your presence among us.
The words for your leaving are caught in our throats
So we gave in to hope, not the big Hope
But the little hopes:
That we will each touch your hand once then
Look into your face then
Then go eat breakfast
Without you.
That we will sing your favorite songs and eat your favorite foods then
That we will remember you well, not fully but
With respect
fully.
Not for you
For ourselves.
We will hold onto what we enjoyed and sort out
The painful pieces of your presence remaining.
We will find a way to leave them behind,
In our own time
Not just because you died
But because we have been working on that project since the day we were born.
And all this time we must have thought we were doing this for you, with you
But now you are gone and we go on.
We go on in the ways you taught us
Saying the words you said
And laughing
Saying the words you said
And raging like a wild fire
cuts a swath through the forest of story.
but we are the forest people
loving the tall trees crowding the fueling dueling underbrush—we know what fire means
what fire brings:
the heat the seeds need
to tell them how the old is dying, drying and burning away
making room for (the new)
you.
We are the Phoenix seeds, rising slowly from the acid of the ashes.
You asked to be cremated, never knowing (how hot) our anger
was burning you alive all this time.
You shrieked at us, and we put the fire out with our tears,
now the tears come all salt and oil: splashing across the fire, sizzling, splattering and finally crystallized across the soiled floor,
You are the salt of the earth and we have salted the field crying over the loss of your dried marrow.
Looking across, bearing the pall, it seems all (hope) is lost
Just because you are lost.
But the truth is we are not lost
Just because we are losing you.
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