The Accordion

 While you read this, listen to Five Variants of 'Dives and Lazarus' .



In our Relief Society meeting Amber plays her accordion: an Irish dance, “Swallow Tail Jig”, intermingled with the hymn melody Kingsfold. Ralph Vaughan Williams used Kingsfold in “Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus’” and the same melody is used in the Latter-day Saint hymn “If You Could Hie to Kolob”. I bow my head and silently weep at the beauty of it, breathing carefully to keep from sobbing. I memorized “Kolob” years ago and studied it again in the months of David’s illness, arranging the words to the “Variants” and singing it through my tears as I prepared supper or washed and bleached the dishes.

“If you could hie to Kolob in the twinkling of an eye, and then continue onward with that same speed to fly, do you think that you could ever, through all eternity, find out the generation where Gods began to be?
“Or see the grand beginning, where space did not extend? Or view the last creation, where Gods and matter end? Methinks the Spirit whispers, “No man has found ‘pure space’, nor seen the outside curtains, where nothing has its place.”
“The works of God continue, and worlds and lives abound; improvement and progression are one eternal round. There is no end to matter; there is no end to space; there is no end to spirit; there is no end to race (the human race).
“There is no end to virtue; there is no end to might; there is no end to wisdom; there is no end to light. There is no end to union; there is no end to youth; there is no end to priesthood; there is no end to truth.
“There is no end to glory; there is no end to love; there is no end to being; there is no death above.

There is no end to glory; there is no end to love; there is no end to being; there is no death above.”

Annie, Jim, and I had a grief phone call on Sunday. I was still in southern California;, Jim had arrived home around noon Saturday after a red-eye flight. Several months ago Jim built a Google Drive spreadsheet based on ‘grief questions’ that Annie supplied from her bereavement group at college.
Here’s a sampling:
“What thoughts and feelings did you experience when you learned of the loss of David?”
“What are some of the positive things you miss about David?”
“What fond memories of David do you cherish?”

Jim and Annie had filled in their answers several months ago, but I had put it off. After our phone call I spent some time answering the questions. Of course I cried. And now for the last two days I’ve felt the grief more intensely.

“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly one you can never have.”
                                                                     —Soren Kierkegaard

Woodshedding

         A few years I retired from my community orchestra because a hand tremor (probably induced by a psychiatric drug I take) prevented me from controlling the viola bow adequately. It then occurred to me to try the piano as a sort of occupational therapy. It was slow at first and my fingers would hit keys randomly, but I kept at it and improved. Surprisingly, being a beginner piano student after playing viola in an orchestra for years wasn’t frustrating. From the first lesson, every time, literally every time I sit down to play I enjoy the music I make.

A familiar term in school and community orchestras, usually directed by the conductor to the string players, is ‘woodshed’. It means to work on a small section of music, playing it over and over until it’s mastered. I’ve always pictured a fiddler standing behind a woodshed, out of earshot, to drill difficult sections of music. Funny story: my current piano teacher, Cami, and I were talking about a piece and I said I just needed to woodshed. She had never heard that term. I laughed: I’d heard it dozens of times. Hard to imagine someone dragging a piano out past the old woodshed.



          Woodshedding is challenging for me. For a day or two I’ll buckle down, practicing one phrase at a time, over and over, one hand at a time, then both hands together. But soon I’m back to trying to play the piece from beginning to end in one shot.

  Does this relate to grief? I think it does. Maybe it’s a stretch, but being in the moment, accepting the pain and sitting with it, seems a bit like woodshedding, which is sitting with the pain of imperfection and the boredom of repetition, not letting distractions win out. In music it’s the distraction of wanting to play to whole thing at once, before I’m ready. In grief it’s wanting to rush ahead to that place where it doesn’t hurt and life returns to normal.
I don’t mean to say I don’t have good days and accomplishments. It’s just that every time I feel intense grief I resist sitting with it. It does hurt, I mourn the losses: our loss of our son, his loss of life, the world’s loss of a good man.

Haiku

On Friday morning, in response to Jim’s email report of our first day in southern California, our son Matt wrote:
What a day to leave.  When I walked to my office this morning, it was a degree.  Just the one.  It's like the weather man put a drop of mercury in the thermometer and then said, "I give up!  It's too cold to be out here filling thermometers."

Annie quipped:

  High thirties today in Shelley (Idaho)! Who needs California?

Just after midnight Sunday morning, Matt contributed:

My windows rattle

Temperature negative ten

Wind chill much colder

Annie answered:

Sure, they warned me, but,

Midnight, it's still thirty four.

#Shelley Idaho

Jim chimed in:

How we do suffer

Here in Calif southern

Always about eighty

From New York City, R’el weighed in:

Awoke to zero

Skipped race for cold, first ever

Bored now on treadmill

Matt responded:

Delicate like a

Petunia, a petunia

Grown in a greenhouse

                                  

Annie added:

Petunias are found

In warm climates, just like your 

Indoor gym, right, R'el?

Peter has the last word (so far):

Run outside, in cold.

Heat, sweat, less of an issue.

Mile in under twelve.

So here are my reflections on our first weekend in southern California:

Friday morning:

Airplane touches down

Palm trees and purple flowers

Trader Joe's abound

Saturday afternoon:

GPS-guided

Surrounded by clog of cars

Slow creep through LA

Tour Science Center

Immersed in Space Shuttle lore

Custom-made choc’lates

Walking on Hollywood Boulevard Saturday evening:

Stars in the sidewalk

Hobnob with Captain Sparrow

Hot Red Ferrari

Sunday morning:

Morning fog rolls in

Obscuring the four-oh-five

Southern sun burns through

Inspired words at

Broadcast from Salt Lake City

Then Jim’s mac & cheese

From 8 to 80

Friday is the 6th monthiversary of David’s death. Sam has Presidents Day off and Jim and I fly to LAX, rent a car, spend the afternoon with Savannah, and the evening with both of them.
At 3:30 a.m. this morning, our friend, David, picked us up at home; his car exterior thermometer read 8 degrees Fahrenheit. By the time we got to California it was an order of magnitude higher. 80 degrees, palm trees, and flowers.

I pull out my T-shirt and capris for the afternoon. When Sam gets home we walk to SpaceX for a delicious cafeteria supper and a Sam-guided tour of the plant. It's like being on a movie set, walking in the factory where huge rocket parts are being made and assembled. There's even a large 'mission control' room with an oversized screen to display the launches from Cape Canaveral. The founder, Elon Musk, envisions colonizing Mars. Heady stuff. Sam, armed with his business degree from Brigham Young University, works on the supply chain for the Draco thrusters on the Dragon payload module.

We’re all aware of this six month mark. December 28, 2014, our friend Ellen did a photo shoot of our family. David had been in the hospital right before Christmas and I worried he wouldn’t make it. But there he is, alive and happy.

Fire in the Treetops

On Friday I drive in the snowstorm to Waltham for my fortnightly therapist appointment. (You know I have bipolar disorder, right?) Afterwards I facilitate a bipolar/depression support group . By the time I’m driving back from Belmont, the snow has stopped and the western sun, dipping below the cloud cover, shines brightly.
I decide to stop by the cemetery. I haven’t visited David’s grave for several weeks. The paths are plowed and I have no problem finding his grave, since the grave opposite of his has a small American flag.
As I get out of the car, looking northeast past the grave, the tops of the trees are on fire, dazzling white. The effect is stunning. I’ve chronicled the changes in seasons at the cemetery, from the deep August green through the autumnal colors. This day the landscape is otherworldly: white expanses of snow on the ground, every twig of the huge trees covered in snow, and white fire in the treetops.

The 'grief loop' continues: work-a-day life interspersed with sadness. A surprising trigger: automatic paper towel dispensers. Soon after David died, I saw a black Georgia Pacific dispenser with the outline of a hand illustrating the no-touch feature. All MGH restrooms have the same model. But now, months later, whenever I use a paper towel dispenser of any kind, I think of David.

Grampa's Travel Notebook

It’s a sunny July day and my sister, brother-in-law, brother Timothy, and Jim drive my 91-year-old father to the broken-down ranchhouse where he grew up. It’s outside of Highwood, Montana, east of Great Falls, abandoned in a golden field of wheat. Dad stays in the car, not wanting to disturb memories of his childhood home, but we walk down the pickup truck tracks over the prickly wheat stubble. Wearing capris and with bare ankles, I walk gingerly to avoid being stabbed by the sharp wheat stocks. My brother, Timothy, strides ahead of me in his boots and jeans, shaking his head at my foolish clothing choice. He spent summers here as a farm hand when he was in high school and loves the Big Sky Country. The old house was electrified years after it was built, but never had running water. The old outhouse (a two-holer) is tipped over in the back yard.

           In the distance, behind the old barn, some people are shooting targets with their guns. Walking around the house we discover the only way in, through an open window, and slowly climb in, avoiding the nails sticking up on the sill. The place is a mess, strewn with picked over magazines, random old feed company calendars, and animal droppings. Upstairs I discover three black student composition notebooks, the kind with the marbled cardboard cover and lined paper bound together with string. They were designed in the days before cheap metal spirals, though I still can buy them at Staples.
The first notebook is titled "State Routes Traveled" and the heading of page one is ‘Alabama’. Each subsequent page has a state name, all in alphabetical order. (There actually aren't any routes listed in Alabama.) My grampa drove all around the country with Gramma. Winter was the slow season on the wheat farm, which gave them the freedom to roam the highways.
I’m thrilled to find the notebook and flip through it with anticipation. What sort of travel journal did he leave? I find each page lists highway numbers and place names, nothing more. They are ledgers of every highway he’d traveled on. No motels, no historic sights or tourist stops, nothing but rows of highway route numbers and place names. Arizona: #69---Jct #79 to Phoenix. Maryland: #39---W Va line to Jct #219 US. Out of hundreds of entries four are dated: 1964.
           The second notebook is titled "Routes North & South Traveled" and the third "East & West Routes Traveled". I take the notebooks with me, thin reminders of my grampa and his travels.

I know from family stories that Grampa drove to each of the lower 48 and took a photo of the state capitol. In my childhood I saw some of those pictures. That gene has been passed down through the generations: I visited each of those 48 states with my kids in 1995. Our son, Matt, is halfway through running a marathon in all 50. He’ll run the Boston Marathon for Patriots’ Day on Monday, April 18th, in honor of David, as part of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. (If you want to know more, or donate to the cause, here’s the link: http://pages.teamintraining.org/ma/boston16/mjohnston.)

My oldest brother, Steve, tells me that Grampa Hazen drove much of Route 1. Here's a notebook entry:
#1 US                                                                                          Baltimore Md. to
              Columbia S.C.
               Daytona Beach Fla to Key West Fla

          He was a wheat farmer who worked hard from spring to harvest and then traveled in the winter when the work was done. He took a photo of every state capitol of the lower 48 and in retirement traveled to Alaska and Hawai’i to finish the job. There’s an “all of” project.