The first time I heard this poem it reminded me of my mother. My mother has been very sick for quite some time.
And with illness, it's often difficult to reframe it without being overwhelmed by what it took away. By what it left us. It takes a certain poetic sense, a child-like gaze to see things in a new, dignified way. To see an illness as a grace. To assign a new meaning to reality.
To admit that the world can be as tender as it is terrible.
Here is one of my favourite poems from this year, a reminder that transformation is not just loss.
In praise of craziness, of a certain kind.
Mary Oliver
On cold evenings
my grandmother,
with ownership of half her mind-
the other half having flown back to Bohemia-
spread newspapers over the porch floor
so, she said, the garden ants could crawl beneath,
as under a blanket, and keep warm,
and what shall I wish for, for myself,
but, being so struck by the lightning of years,
to be like her with what is left, that loving.
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