Tag: remembrance

Though I didn’t talk about it when I posted Wednesday, the new year began somewhat sorrowfully here in Tucson, with the news that morning that the cantor of the congregation I belong to had died–the result of violence that I suspect much of the community will struggling for some time to make sense of, even as we struggle to keep the violence from being the thing we most remember.

Music and singing are very much a part of Jewish life and services, and Karla’s voice and music have been a deep and central part of our congregation all the time I’ve been there. (And were part of the congregation I belonged to before that for a time too.)

We were asked the past week to share memories of Karla, and one of the ones that I keep coming around to and that I finally sent on is this:

The congregation holds Rosh Hashanah services up on Mount Lemmon, and my first year up there with them was the year after a wildfire had swept through much of the mountain. We prayed surrounded by reminders of the fire’s desolation–by ashes and the blackened remains of dead trees.

As we were praying, we reached the hallelujah song that’s a part of the service, and–there was just something about the way Karla’s voice rose up as she sang it–something in me rose up, too, past the stark trees to the blue sky–and suddenly all that devastation seemed terribly, terribly beautiful and precious.

I’ve been listening for that song every year since.

Karla’s spirit and joy and presence all will be–already are–very much missed.

I’ve never watched TV news coverage of the 9/11 memorials, possibly because I’m not strongly geared toward television in general, possibly because I felt like all the news media failed me that day and in the months that followed and I’m wary of their coverage of it even now.

But every year I reread John M. Ford’s “110 Stories.”

This year, I’ve added K. Tempest Bradford’s “Until Forgiveness Comes.”

I’m still thinking about that story, and about why it got to me so.

For Katherine, December 11, 1954 – March 25, 2004

There’s a story that’s worked it’s way into a talk I give about fantasy novels, about how words spoken by a character in an early draft of Bones (which Katherine had not read) turned out to be nearly identical to words in Katherine’s journal (which I’d not read, not until afterwards, and even then only in part). Katherine was so convinced she was alone and unworthy–yet it’s writing that taught me that no one is fully alone, because there’s nothing any one of us feels that others haven’t felt, too.

I’m not pleased with Katherine for giving me an anecdote that worked so neatly into my talk. But I can get through the telling of it without faltering.

Too many other writers have taken their own lives, in the years before and since. But being a writer isn’t an excuse. Not for anything.

I debated whether to post this evening. I didn’t post anything last year on this day, because I was occupied for the weekend with my Scout troop–with the business of living–and that seemed good and well and as it should be.

But tonight, or whatever reason, I did pause and remember. And so I’m posting this, one more time, for Katherine, December 11, 1954 – March 25, 2004.

=-=-=-=-=

This Isn’t a Story

I’m sorry, Katherine,
but dying isn’t a story.
I saw your careful outline,
your well-researched notes:
first the heroine died,
then her adventures began.
You knew every detail:
the ghost town by the river,
when the trains ran,
the reasons why bullets were
better than pills.
You wrote and rewrote
the opening scenes. Nothing more.
Because dying isn’t a story.

We argued about story. We argued
when you stopped writing.
No, edit that. I argued. You said
you’d keep your notes and walked away.
You understood pacing and tension.
You mailed your goodbyes as you drove out of town;
walked down to the river, leaned back, looked up at the sky—

But no. Dying isn’t a story.
The hikers who found you,
that was a story. The police officer
with the half-finished novel;
the county parks manager in cutoff jeans
who told us he was sorry,
who told us he’d done this before.
A story is a long drive home through the dark,
both my hands steady on the wheel.

Your empty apartment was a story,
at least once we opened the door:
The answering machine blinking its silence,
the solstice cards lining the hall.
The borrowed books set on the counter,
labeled with sticky notes, bearing our names.
Nothing left to the reader:
no loose ends, no unresolved threads.
But a story is messier than a body by a river,
a bullet to the head. A story is
your mother packing your dishes
and your silver and a fifth of Scotch,
filling out the paperwork
to transport your gun across state lines.

You had a promising start:
the opening lines, the rising tension,
the chilling sense of things
that couldn’t happen any other way.
But those things aren’t a story,
and dying doesn’t make them one.

You knew how to outline
and you knew how to plot.
So how could you not know
what all writers know,
I still don’t know.
I’m sorry, Katherine.
This poem isn’t a story,
but I’m not driving away.

westonochse has both posted more eloquently than I could about the death of Les Reese today.

Les was a regular at TusCon, our local SF convention, and an enthusiastic and cheerful and friendly and all-around interesting person wherever I was lucky enough to get to talk to him for a bit. He was just beginning to sell his own writing, and I’m sorry we won’t get to see more of it; but I’m more sorry that the world won’t get to be improved by his presence in it for a while longer yet.