The Waking

Theodore Roethke [1908-1963]

 

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

 

………..

Remarks

 

If you know me at all you know I write poems. You may not realize that poetry serves as the spiritual touchstone in my life. I do not embrace or subscribe to any religion, and my concept of god is essentially the opposite of what is popularly believed.

When besieged by the intractable questions that torment and baffle our human race, I read poetry. It rarely lets me down. Of all the poems I've ever read, there are two that I love most of all. You just heard one of them. The other is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot. He opens this masterpiece with a quote from Dante's Inferno, and to paraphrase, "I tell you this fearlessly because to my knowledge not one soul has ever returned from where you are going."

I am speaking from that place, otherwise known as hell, or as I think of it, the desert of despair. Looking around I see that among this crowd of people I am quite alone here. That cannot be helped, because this place is reserved for mothers like me, those who have sustained what Shakespeare called "the unkindest cut of all."

I strive to make my way out of here and live again before I die, and believe that I stand an excellent chance of succeeding. For that I must thank my daughter, Bekah Zask, for going above and beyond the call of duty to let me know that she is with me, her love survives, and she is in a good place. A place that is so much closer to earth than the word "dead" implies.

Here on earth, we live in time, our souls outfitted with the trappings of mortality. In the great beyond where Bekah was sent before her time, souls live in eternity. Eternity is to the other side what time is to our mortal side.

During moments of appreciative epiphany, for instance diving into the ocean or watching the sun rise in the desert, we are allowed to partake of the same eternity that characterizes the dimension where Bekah lives. Likewise the souls who inhabit eternity visit time at will.

I am able to say this, and even believe it, because my daughter has demonstrated to me in a number of amazing ways that she is near, very very near, that she is still Bekah, and that she loves us in a vital, ongoing sense. I won't take the time to recite the catalogue of Bekah's post-mortem unexplained phenomena and incredible small world stories, but if you want to know or if you have something to add to it, see me afterward, email me, or call and we'll talk.

This catalogue enables my recovery from the most profound and painful loss. It includes the truly phenomenal occurrences where physical matter on this plane was affected by what I believe to be Bekah's post-death energy, and many other less striking instances, which a skeptic might charge do not constitute evidence of anything.

To know that Bekah is hugging me because I get the chills up and down my body independently of any observable physical cause is to apply faith to my experience. With faith my soul transcends this place where I am bereft of my beloved daughter, and Bekah and I are together.

Faith is a difficult thing to summon. For someone as logical as myself, who has looked around this world for almost 47 years and observed no evidence of a cognizant god, faith rests by necessity on people and is driven by love. Of many lessons taken since Bekah was killed, the first was that, of any and all faiths I had ever entertained to that point, the most deeply held of all, the one thing I believed one thousand percent unequivocally, was I will die before my children.

 

Obviously Bekah's death did more than shake my faith: it disproved it. The second lesson was, I have survived my daughter, a lesson that was accompanied by many more questions than answers. The biggest question was, "Will I live again between now and when I die?" Because I must distinguish between survival and life. Losing Bekah was a blow of such proportion it took my vitality the way getting punched in the gut takes your breath. And to my mind, survival is hardly worthwhile if life is left behind.

To survey a point in time after Bekah's death where I might anticipate the future instead of chasing the past, pursue happiness instead of endure pain, experience joy as well as grief, was impossible for months after she died. First of all, I had to believe she was dead - that took about two and a half months. I never knew a person could be in shock for two and a half months. After I learned Bekah died, another few months were spent trying to make her be alive again, a task that my mind recognized as futile, but which my heart insisted upon.

After about six months I had traveled to where I am today, acceptance. Not the calm and peaceful knowing I had imagined, acceptance is perhaps the single longest span within this desert of despair, and it is comparable to the Sahara. During the hot season. At noon. Naked, alone and burning, so that no suggestion or threat of a hell beyond this earth will ever mean anything to me, I speak on my daughter's 22nd birthday.

No cake no ice cream no candles. No birthday girl? This day has rolled at me like a silent locomotive. There is no sound, because eternity has claimed Bekah's noises. I wanted on this day to celebrate the life of my precious girl, but her passing is too new for me to be happy, or even pretend to be.

And so instead I offer this testimony: There is no death but the shedding of mortality. Though you may say there is a god and I say there is not, don't think we're headed for separate eternities. Because I do perceive a plethora of souls on the other side. Souls who love me. And if god is not love, what's the point?

Love is god, love is why, love puts faith into my soul and brings Bekah into my dreams. Love will lead me back to life in time.

"the Song is Love"
[by mary travers: first of all, i would like to say a word or two, i know you won't be thinking this applies to you, but it's true, and it do...all your life, you have had to sing your song alone, not believing anybody could have known, but you're wrong, and you know...

i found a song let me sing it to you, let me say it now while the meaning is new, but wouldn't it be good if we could sing it together? don't be afraid to sing me a line, sing about the joy that i know we can find, wind them around and see what they sound like together...the song is love/the song is love/the song is love

last of all, i would like to thank you for the word or two spoken in the moments when i needed you ah to see me through, and they do...

i found a song let me sing it to you, let me say it now while the meaning is new, but wouldn't it be good if we could sing it together? don't be afraid to sing me a line, sing about the joy that i know we can find, wind them around and see what they sound like together...the song is love/the song is love/the song is love]

 

Love does not die. This is a statement often repeated to comfort the bereaved. This truth is the light I am beginning to perceive on the emerging side of the indescribably terrible place I was sent to when Bekah died.

I did not choose to come here. Bekah did not choose, court, or deserve her early exit from life. We are victims, each of us, chosen by random to know this pain and this loss where we should be knowing her voice, her laugh, her hugs….

Thank you Bekah, for your ongoing extra special efforts to reinvest me with a faith that allows hope, without which life is, if not impossible, certainly not worth my time. I have stalked your soul for almost a year and today it is your 22nd birthday…but you will never be older than 21 years 13 days. By the numbers I have learned that you were always 22, based on your date of birth. Those with a destiny number of 22 are especially special souls, with auras of gold and accomplishments of deep meaning. And so you lead your bereft mother away from the desert of despair back to life after your own life has been cut short.

That love is a force and a need as well as a feeling is not a new concept for me. Little did I know that my daughter would be taken abruptly and rudely by a human who is for my purposes the embodiment of Love's antithesis. So it is people who feed my faith and it is people who threaten it. People who want me to be happy and fulfilled and people who would happily relegate me to a lifetime in hell.

An irony attending Bekah's tragedy is that because of it, I have grown close to family members I never would have otherwise, I have gotten to know and come to love many of Bekah's friends who would have maintained their distance had she lived, and I have been comforted by and allowed to offer comfort to bereaved people from around the world. These people bring more and more love into my life. At times I want to wail and often I do cry, because why did Bekah have to die to enrich my life?

But in the final analysis, though as I have learned I cannot turn back the clock, make Bekah be alive again, or even effect justice for her, there are some choices left to me. Choices regarding whether I settle down in or work my way through the desert of despair. Whether I wail and protest the wrong done to Bekah from a vacuum of bitterness, or work to make a change and maybe save one mother and one child from having to endure this. Whether I accept everything that has been left to me and offered to me because Bekah died, or just the grief that wants to own me.

The bottom line is: if I choose only the grief and allow the rest of my time on this planet to be dictated by this bereavement, if I refuse the gifts, of love, friendship, companionship and comfort that have been presented to my children and I by generous caring people in the aftermath of her murder, because she should not have had to die to make this happen, Bekah will still be dead.

 

Shortly after Bekah died, I visited with a friend whose husband was murdered about five years ago. She helped me open up to let Bekah's love begin to build faith back inside of me. She told me how her husband's visits after he died scared her at first and how over time, she accepted his ongoing presence in her life, so that now she lets his spirit help her raise their two young children. When I asked shouldn't she let him go, because she is too young to remain a widow for the rest of her life, she said, "Oh, I live FOR my husband." I didn't get it.

Some very important people in my life since Bekah died are those who do know my grief. Parents who have emerged to live again although their child was murdered are like beacons, mentors, ministers to me. Last February, after the person who murdered my daughter was allowed to plead out of the murder charge and sentenced to almost no time at all for killing Bekah, I visited with one of these friends. This man's 18-year-old son was murdered over ten dollars worth of crack and the case was dismissed on a pre-trial motion because the witness was around the corner when the shot was fired.

Well, my friend got justice for his son and spent several years in prison because he did. Now he is out, in love, living and working on happiness. As I sat there choking on the bitter pill of Bekah's justice denied, seeking the wisdom that will allow me peace even though Bekah's murderer allows me no basis for forgiveness, my friend looked at me with milleniums of sorrow and love in his eyes and said, "Now, go live for Bekah." I didn't get it.

I get it now. Living for Bekah means living for Bekah: going after LIFE with gusto, energy, sharing LIFE with any number of fascinating people, soaking up LIFE with joy, laughter, fun, friends.

Living for Bekah means living. When I get out of this place I will live for Bekah: live, as if Bekah is perched on my shoulder living it too. I ask those of you here today to do the same: give my little girl a ride on your shoulder; live for Bekah.

Live long love much be as good as you can be, to yourselves as well as each other. Laugh a lot, and be open to those moments when Bekah will show you her love.

To Bekah,
Love forever in eternity in time on earth in the sky and the great beyond, where you blow kisses sculpt turtles in clouds squirt water at your brother
Find many ways to comfort me

Be well be free bless your soul darling girl and fulfill your finest possibilities in eternity.

In time this will be understood by me: it is how it is so that must be how it must be.

amen