Grieving with my Father

A few days ago, it was approximately 24 hours after my beloved 73-year old stepmother of 30 years. Pauline, passed away after a grueling and heroic 18-month battle against cancer, that I sat with my father in his living room and tried to console him in his darkest moment.

We were having a glass of red wine and talking and talking, about anything.

I no longer recall how or why our conversation drifted toward poetry, but it did.

He quoted Tennyson and Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” and recounted the incredible story of how he met Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil in the late 1960s at a party and complimented her concerning “The Fish. She replied, “Oh that old thing.”

Then he launched into a stanza from Sir Walter Scott’s “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” :

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!

This quote was prompted by our discussion of the soulless henchmen who don’t put their country first, but rather their political party, their greed, their racism, their fear, their anger. Country always last.

I just marveled as my father finished this quote. Surely at that moment, he was the only man in America quoting Sir Walter Scott!

And in defense of his nation and the working class people my father so dearly loves.

After Sir Walter, we segued into the current state of American political affairs and Dad launched into the Gettysburg Address and stopped here and there and we took apart points that now seem utterly lost on so many Americans and quite obviously those is the White House and the upper echelons of power.

Later, I put him to bed and picked up a book, reading but not reading, wondering where we’ll go from here.