Tag Archives: Happy Father’s Day

a promise kept for father’s day

16 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by in Art, Awesome Women, Blogging, Breast Cancer Treatment, Chemotherapy, Family, Fathers and sons, Friendships, Happy Father's Day, Loss, Love, Memoir, Poetry, Seamus Heaney, Social Media, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

On June 15th, 2013, I wrote the following as a promise to Karen Sutherland.  I am profoundly saddened to learn of her passing exactly four years later. Karen was witty and wise and much loved by her ‘sisters’ in the online breast cancer community. She always offered a soft place to fall and an encouraging word even as she dealt with the ravages of cancer and loss in her own life.  It was my honor to know you, Karen, for you made the world a much better place. My deepest condolences to your family. I remember you once shared with me a lovely story about your Hugh, and I promised I would share it on Father’s Day 2013. It seems fitting to share it again today. Rest easy now and thank you

Originally posted June 15, 2013

I never met Hugh James Sutherland who died on Sunday, May 5, 2013, but I know he loved the New York Times crossword puzzle, Scrabble, Starbucks, and walking at dusk with his wife. Nor have I met his wife, Karen, but she is my friend. We first bumped into each other on the blogosphere, via a comment she left on my New Year’s Day post. Signed TC (diagnosed with ST IV metastatic BC, december 16, 2012, now NED) it reminded me of the first time I ventured into an online breast cancer forum where all the guests signed their names not with the typical first-initial-last-name standard, but instead the ironic pedigree that included in the following order: date of diagnosis-type of cancer-size of tumor-stage-grade-node involvement-estrogen and progesterone positivity-HER2/neu status. Conjuring for me a bookish teacher from my childhood, admired by my parents for the “string of letters after her name,” I must confess that I still cannot recite by heart the line and lineage of my particular cancer and still resort to looking up the answers in my pathology report).

An engaging and elegant writer, Karen, surely had a blog or a website. I searched high and low to no avail. When she shared her story with me, I understood why there was no blog. Her husband, Hugh, had been diagnosed in October 2009 with multiple myeloma, a rare cancer of the blood that originates in the bone marrow, and although treatable, is incurable. It had been the couple’s 42nd wedding anniversary, and Hugh was putting something in the front seat of the car when his femur snapped in half. Next came the trauma of the diagnosis, followed by an unsuccessful surgery to rebuild his leg. He was in excruciating pain as he endured physical therapy, chemotherapy, two stem cell transplants, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression. From her ring-side seat and her thirty years experience as a hospice nurse, Karen planned to write a blog from the caregiver’s perspective, knowing it would help others. Her blog did not come to fruition, because in December of 2011, cancer visited again. This time, it was Karen who would receive the diagnosis of Stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer. Seriously. Because cancer is just that cruel.

A double nightmare as each observed the other endure the relentless assault of treatment that included chemotherapy and depression for Karen too. Eventually she would hear what we cancer patients all want to hear – “No Evidence of Disease” (NED) and by late summer in 2012, Hugh was responding to the stem cell transplants and no longer suffering from depression. By this time, Karen had become well informed about the diseases that had been visited upon her and the love of her life, largely from blogs written by patients and caregivers. Grateful for the information and buoyed by the support she found within the blogosphere, Karen decided to make her mark by commenting. It was a way to pay it forward for all the support she was finding in our virtual village:

I comment to lend support, to provide comfort and understanding and compassion, to share aspects of our story that might help others, to validate, comfort, encourage, commiserate, rant and rave, and thank bloggers like you, dear yvonne, who spend so much time and emotional energy to share your stories, to let you all know how much I appreciate all the profoundly and beautifully written words, many that will remain etched upon my heart and soul forever.

Thus, Karen TC (The Commenter) makes her mark on the lives of those who write in this online and close-knit community, and it was to them she turned the day she found her darling Hugh in their bed, unresponsive with no heartbeat.

“Karen The Commenter Needs Us . . . blared from AnneMarie Cicarella’s blog, and from all corners of the globe, we gathered around the couple we have never met, each of us having been lifted up by Karen’s comments sprinkled like breadcrumbs to help us find our way home, because we frequently get lost on our respective treks through through cancer country. We became ‘the commenters’ for Karen, as she began to accept the new realities of living without Hugh, missing him and realizing he would not be here for all those days marked on the calendar, those “first” days without him like this Sunday – Father’s Day – which leads me to my promise . . .

On Valentine’s Day, Karen had left a comment on a piece I had written, Ronald Reagan’s Love Medicine in which I was bemoaning the lost art of letter writing. I was touched by her comment, a gem of a story about how her family also cherishes words set down on paper. Recognizing its universal appeal, I asked her if I could re-post it when Father’s Day rolled around. She loved the idea, so here it is – for Father’s Day, for Hugh and those who loved him:

dear yvonne
 
… here’s a little story about how we’ve treasured the written word.
 
a few days before last father’s day, i was cleaning off a shelf in hugh’s closet. way in the back behind the shirts in cleaners’ boxes was a fathers’ day card our son made for his dad when he was 9 years old. adam had listed all the things he loved that he and hugh did together and illustrated each in his precious, childish style. i shared the find with hugh and we both shared some tears of joy that it survived so long – our son is 40 years old!
 
adam has a son, our only grandson, brian, who, to our great joy, is a near clone of his dad. and it turns out that all those things adam had expressed to hugh in writing and pictures all those years ago are the same things brian loves and enjoys with adam. and what a happy, meant-to-beness it was to realize that brian was now also 9 years old, just the age his dad had been when he made that special FD card.
when the kids came to our house for the big father’s day celebration, we took brian aside and showed him the card his dad made for his papa 31 years ago. he beamed when we suggested passing it on to his dad. adam was blown away to see written proof of happy history repeating itself within the words and pictures of the card. he was so overjoyed to see the love he had expressed for HIS dad was now being given right back to him by his darling boy.
 
i, too, revere many things written by hand from so many family members and friends. i keep all our calendars, too, where i’ve scrawled so many milestones of so many lives. one of the greatest losses of things written down that still feels heartbreaking is the big thick cookbook my mom always had at hand. she stuffed it with letters from my grandmother, little love notes from us, her children, old photos, and emphemera of all sorts. with 8 children, and litttle of her own space to keep her little mementos tucked safely away, i guess the old cookbook was her file cabinet. somehow, it just diappeared. i’d give up my kindle gladly, just to have one more look through it’s pages, brimming with such marvelous history, pages of favorite recipes dog-earred, stained messy with beloved flour-egg-chocolate cake battered fingerprints of my mom and me, cooking together.
 
i love this post, yvonne – it bought back a lot of wonderful memories. thank you.
 
love, XOXO,
 
karen, TC

I knew not what to say to Karen after Hugh died. I didn’t have the right words so I turned again to poetry and to something Seamus Heaney had written in Station Island, about himself as a father and his own father as well. This Father’s Day weekend, I am thinking of Hugh Sutherland and those who loved him, of his son and grandson, “taking the strain,” of the “long tailed pull of grief” . . .

A Kite for Michael and Christopher by Seamus Heaney

All through that Sunday afternoon
A kite flew above Sunday,
a tightened drumhead, an armful of blow chaff.

I’d seen it grey and slippy in the making,
I’d tapped it when it dried out white and stiff,
I’d tied the bows of the newspaper
along its six-foot tail.

But now it was far up like a small black lark
and now it dragged as if the bellied string
were a wet rope hauled upon
to life a shoal.

My friend says that the human soul
is about the weight of a snipe
yet the soul at anchor there,
the string that sags and ascends,
weigh like a furrow assumed into the heavens.

Before the kite plunges down into the wood
and this line goes useless
take in your two hands, boys, and feel
the strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.
You were born fit for it.
Stand here in front of me
and take the strain.

image

Art by Sheila Dee

Memorial contributions in Hugh’s name may be made to Hackensack University Medical Center Foundation with Multiple Myeloma in the memo of the check in order to designate the funds. The mailing address is 360 Essex Street, Suite 301, Hackensack, New Jersey 07601.

 

inarticulate speech of the heart – on father’s day

15 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in Belfast, Crafts, Family, Fathers and sons, Happy Father's Day, Memoir, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Ordinary Things, Poetry, Seamus Heaney, Social Media, Soundtracks of our Lives, Themes of Childhood

≈ 29 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

971768_10201393643784185_1437361568_nThis will not be a happy Father’s Day for my father.  From far away, he will worry about my daughter and me and how we are doing on this, my daughter’s first Father’s Day without her dad. He’ll wish he could be in Phoenix, to fix things for us, to paint the laundry room or clean the windows or mix cement to repair the brick mailbox. Naturally, he won’t understand why I don’t understand why all those things need fixing. And naturally, I won’t understand why he won’t understand that they don’t.

The truth is that each of us wants to fix the unfixable, to live forever so our children will never experience the pain of loss. We want to stop time, close distance, and find the right words right when we need them.

Sophie’s father was her first word, her first teacher, her best friend. Older – and wiser – than me, he knew he would be gone first. So she knew.

I remember how saddened he was by the death of Lou Reed. He didn’t even want to talk about it. I remember writing about  it, and it was one of the first times my husband didn’t want to read something I’d written.  Just twelve days before my husband died, I wrote again about Lou Reed, remembering the first time our daughter  discovered her beautiful hands. For me, her besotted mother, it seemed an almost magical milestone in her development, as though she were the first child to ever make such a discovery. Her fingers in constant motion, I called it “hand ballet.”  Transfixed, as though under a spell, she paid rapt attention, staring intently, unblinking, at those little fingers that would, all too soon cooperate to clap hands, tie laces, create pictures, make music, whisk eggs, and wipe away tears.

Who would have imagined an occasion where I would suspend in the same thought my baby girl and the late Lou Reed, their elegant hands in motion. She saying hello to her hands, he waving goodbye.  His wife Laurie Anderson wrote that he spent much of his last days on earth “being happy and dazzled by the beauty and power and softness of nature. He died on Sunday morning looking at the trees and doing the famous 21 form of tai chi with just his musician hands moving through the air.” This time, Ken read it.

Today, I want my father to know that I am beginning to live the way Lou Reed taught me:

There’s a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out.

My daughter has already learned this, and I have her dad to thank for that.

So while I know my father will feel sad, especially for my girl as she steps out into the sunshine today without her dad, I hope he will smile at the thought of all the magic, all the  lovely remembrances stockpiled in her heart for when she needs them most. On a day like today.

If he could have his four grandchildren for an afternoon, there would be ice-cream galore, an endless supply of buns and cakes from a bakery in the village, perhaps a trip to the Lough to feed swans and stare out at the grey waters in which my father and his friend, Bobby McVeigh, trained for long-distance, bitterly cold North Atlantic swims from Ballycastle to Rathlin Islind. Certainly, there would be a detour on the way home for a quick run into the sweet shop where each of those youngsters will be indulged by a grandfather with a wicked sweet tooth. He would probably even let my daughter drive.

There are so many minutes and miles between us all, that it sometimes breaks my heart to have missed out on the everyday conversations and cups of tea, the bits and pieces of homespun wisdom from the heart of rural Derry, all the gardening tips and the home improvement projects that would have colored our lives had we lived just up the road. Indeed it is from too far away, relying heavily on photographs and phone calls, brown paper packages and greeting cards, texts and Facebook and Skype, that our parents have transformed into the grandparents they were so obviously always meant to be, eager for news of their grandchildren’s accomplishments that will be broadcast over hill and dale. Our virtual connection has softened the blow of time and distance for them both, especially for our father. 

And while I know this Father’s Day will bring sorrow, I know it will bring smiles too. I am smiling as I imagine da standing over my mother’s shoulder, reading something I’ve written, curiosity and anticipation twinkling behind his reading glasses.

Noticing the black and white picture of us, he will wonder aloud where in the name of God the past fifty one years have gone and then, under his breath, a “Boys a dear,” before he falls silent, coming to the realization that this one is especially for him . . .

Guest post by my brother, Keith Watterson, the image of the man pictured here with me in 1963. Keith lives in Limerick, Ireland, with his wife, Ita, and three little boys, Tom, Charlie, and Joe.

“The answers to some questions float just out of reach through and beyond childhood before parenthood shocks you into the necessity of sharpening up your act when an inquisitive toddler asks you, “Why/what/where/who is that, dad?”

Such questions can range from mildly curious inquiries into phenomena as the composition of rainbows, and the tendency of boats to float on water as against the inevitability of stones sinking—relatively easily explained; thank you, Wikipedia—up to more urgent demands for satisfaction on the stickier issues, of why you are working late (again), and why shops close down (a common one in Ireland, that, these days).

Then of course, there are those moments when you are asked to turn one single, jam-slicked block of Lego into a dinosaur; or draw a picture of Buzz Lightyear on a broken MagnaDoodle with a stylus a quarter-inch in diameter.

There is also the expectation that you can do anything. One of my eldest son Tom’s first almost coherent sentences was: “I break it; dad fix it.”

It’s particularly at moments like these that I think about my own dad, Eric. The remarkable thing about him is that he would be entirely unfazed by the challenge of constructing a Millennium Falcon, a Dalek, or some other space-age gizmo with which he had no familiarity whatsoever, out of the most basic and limited resources.

It’s something that he’s done throughout his life. Dad made a guitar, when he was little more than ten years old, for his younger brother Ben, who then was just a toddler. Ben still plays guitar and a variety of stringed instruments to this day.

Later in life, after he and mam bought their first house, dad pretty much gutted its ground floor, knocking two rooms into one for an extensive kitchen/dining area, and at the back of the house, he added a utility room, fully wired it, plumbed it for a washing machine and added a W.C. He even constructed a permanent glasshouse in which he grew his own tomatoes. Built into one corner of the courtyard, was an enclosed patio area, complete with an ornamental cottage fireplace that had a replica forged iron crane and pot. He painstakingly decorated the outside of the glasshouse with dozens of scallop shells that he had collected from a beach in County Donegal.

From mixing concrete to stripping apart a faulty iron to mend it and rebuild it, it seemed there was nothing he couldn’t do.

Sadly, I inherited none of his impressive skills in handiwork. However, I may have picked up some of his more artistic impulses. He’s one of those people who can sit down and pick out a tune on the piano, even though he has had no formal tuition. It was not uncommon to hear him in full song as he played by ear “When the Saints Go Marching In.” I remember well the huge piano accordion he picked up from time to time to pump out melody. “The Black Velvet Band” was one of his favorites.

Even though dad reads the newspaper every day, I’ve rarely seen him with a book in his hand. However, one of his party pieces when I was young was to recite from memory ‘The Shooting of Dan McGrew’ and ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’ by Robert Service. Where he learned those poems, I have no idea, but it’s probably my earliest memory of poetry. And listening to his fellow County Derry man Seamus Heaney reading his own poetry always connects me with those impromptu Service workshops from many years ago.

Sometimes all of these memories collide, as memories often will, in a sound or a sensation in an entirely unexpected context. I’ve tried in vain to persuade my sister of my, admittedly whimsical, view that Robbie Robertson of The Band somehow channeled the sound of my dad digging potato drills (or “purdy drills” as he calls them) into the tambourine shiver and tap that punctuates the chorus of ‘Tears of Rage.’ Every time I hear the song, it stops me in my tracks, because somehow it is the sound of my dad’s spade slicing through the soil in the flowerbeds and gently shaking it out, before slicing into the earth again,in a steady rhythm.

I don’t really know what any of this tells you about my dad. There’s a great song by the Wexford artist Pierce Turner, called ‘You Can Never Know’, from his brilliant 1988 album The Sky And The Ground. The song is about how difficult it is to put another person in your shoes; to convey to another person the emotions you experience in particular situations. It begins with the narrator driving along listening to Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ before telling us we can never really know what it’s like to experience his childhood memories of standing in a church “full of boy sopranos singing  ‘Faith of our Fathers’ at the top of our hearts.”  Echoing Lou Reed’s famous lyrics when “the colored girls go …,” he sings “It felt so good to hear those choir voicings.” Then the barriers to understanding melt away in a triumphant climax as he sings straight out the hymn’s refrain: “Faith of our fathers! Holy faith! We will be true to thee ’til death.” For me – and I’ve had almost violent disagreements with people about this – it’s one of the most profoundly moving moments in late 20th century popular music.

Seeing the man perform this song in Whelan’s Pub in Dublin, was simply amazing. In live performance, rather than the polished persuasion of the studio version, the closed door of the title is gleefully kicked open by Turner, as he jumps onto pint-strewn tables to belt out this 19th century hymn, leading the dozens of people in the audience in euphoric accompaniment. In the live setting, it was as if Turner decided that if, indeed, we can never know what that childhood memory truly felt like, then so what? He would give us the next best thing, and make us feel it through music.

There is a moment in the song when he talks about his father, standing in the church with him on that day, “My father’s hand on my shoulder, nicotine-stained index finger, big and rough, but love can’t always be articulate…”

I’ve shared many of those moments, those Van Morrison would refer to as “inarticulate speech” times with my dad, especially in childhood, and unfortunately with much less frequency these days. Dad took me to my very first football match on a foggy St. Stephen’s Day (I think it was at Glentoran, but it was an awfully long time ago); indulged my every request to make things; endured my complete and utter failure to grasp the principles of algebra, of which, naturally, he has an instinctive understanding to rival that of any mathematics teacher; taught me to drive; and he let me ride ‘shotgun’ with him every weekend and on school holidays on his rounds for the Mother’s Pride and then Golden Crust bakeries, for whom he was a delivery man for 10 years or so. He even helped me write a poem about my hometown, Antrim, for a homework exercise assigned by some sadist of a primary school teacher. Actually, he didn’t help me. He just wrote it. “Antrim was a little town, there wasn’t many stores; but many buildings have sprung up, the population’s soared,” went the opening. “The Bluebird Café in the Square, and Craig’s the cobblers, too / have vanished from the local scene; I don’t know what we’ll do,” was another couplet. Alas, the rest is lost in the mists of time.

He’s always been there for me, and has picked me up and dusted me down and set me off again, probably many more times than I’ve deserved.

As I think of him on this Father’s Day, particularly now when I’ve had the pleasure of watching him get to know my own sons, Tom, and his little twin brothers Charlie and Joe, all I can say is that if they learn half as much from me as I’ve learned from him, I’ll be a happy man. And if they don’t, they have the fortunate consolation of a granddad who can actually turn a single block of Lego into something that might meet, or even exceed, their wildest imaginings.

Happy Father’s Day, dad.”

a promise kept for father’s day

15 Saturday Jun 2013

Posted by in Art, Awesome Women, Blogging, Breast Cancer Treatment, Chemotherapy, Family, Fathers and sons, Friendships, Happy Father's Day, Loss, Love, Memoir, Poetry, Seamus Heaney, Social Media, Writing

≈ 30 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

I never met Hugh James Sutherland who died on Sunday, May 5, 2013, but I know he loved the New York Times crossword puzzle, Scrabble, Starbucks, and walking at dusk with his wife. Nor have I met his wife, Karen, but she is my friend. We first bumped into each other on the blogosphere, via a comment she left on my New Year’s Day post. Signed TC (diagnosed with ST IV metastatic BC, december 16, 2012, now NED) it reminded me of the first time I ventured into an online breast cancer forum where all the guests signed their names not with the typical first-initial-last-name standard, but instead the ironic pedigree that included in the following order: date of diagnosis-type of cancer-size of tumor-stage-grade-node involvement-estrogen and progesterone positivity-HER2/neu status. Conjuring for me a bookish teacher from my childhood, admired by my parents for the “string of letters after her name,” I must confess that I still cannot recite by heart the line and lineage of my particular cancer and still resort to looking up the answers in my pathology report).

An engaging and elegant writer, Karen, surely had a blog or a website. I searched high and low to no avail. When she shared her story with me, I understood why there was no blog. Her husband, Hugh, had been diagnosed in October 2009 with multiple myeloma, a rare cancer of the blood that originates in the bone marrow, and although treatable, is incurable. It had been the couple’s 42nd wedding anniversary, and Hugh was putting something in the front seat of the car when his femur snapped in half. Next came the trauma of the diagnosis, followed by an unsuccessful surgery to rebuild his leg. He was in excruciating pain as he endured physical therapy, chemotherapy, two stem cell transplants, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression. From her ring-side seat and her thirty years experience as a hospice nurse, Karen planned to write a blog from the caregiver’s perspective, knowing it would help others. Her blog did not come to fruition, because in December of 2011, cancer visited again. This time, it was Karen who would receive the diagnosis of Stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer. Seriously. Because cancer is just that cruel.

A double nightmare as each observed the other endure the relentless assault of treatment that included chemotherapy and depression for Karen too. Eventually she would hear what we cancer patients all want to hear – “No Evidence of Disease” (NED) and by late summer in 2012, Hugh was responding to the stem cell transplants and no longer suffering from depression. By this time, Karen had become well informed about the diseases that had been visited upon her and the love of her life, largely from blogs written by patients and caregivers. Grateful for the information and buoyed by the support she found within the blogosphere, Karen decided to make her mark by commenting. It was a way to pay it forward for all the support she was finding in our virtual village:

I comment to lend support, to provide comfort and understanding and compassion, to share aspects of our story that might help others, to validate, comfort, encourage, commiserate, rant and rave, and thank bloggers like you, dear yvonne, who spend so much time and emotional energy to share your stories, to let you all know how much I appreciate all the profoundly and beautifully written words, many that will remain etched upon my heart and soul forever.

Thus, Karen TC (The Commenter) makes her mark on the lives of those who write in this online and close-knit community, and it was to them she turned the day she found her darling Hugh in their bed, unresponsive with no heartbeat.

“Karen The Commenter Needs Us . . . blared from AnneMarie Cicarella’s blog, and from all corners of the globe, we gathered around the couple we have never met, each of us having been lifted up by Karen’s comments sprinkled like breadcrumbs to help us find our way home, because we frequently get lost on our respective treks through through cancer country. We became ‘the commenters’ for Karen, as she began to accept the new realities of living without Hugh, missing him and realizing he would not be here for all those days marked on the calendar, those “first” days without him like this Sunday – Father’s Day – which leads me to my promise . . .

On Valentine’s Day, Karen had left a comment on a piece I had written, Ronald Reagan’s Love Medicine in which I was bemoaning the lost art of letter writing. I was touched by her comment, a gem of a story about how her family also cherishes words set down on paper. Recognizing its universal appeal, I asked her if I could re-post it when Father’s Day rolled around. She loved the idea, so here it is – for Father’s Day, for Hugh and those who loved him:

dear yvonne
 
… here’s a little story about how we’ve treasured the written word.
 
a few days before last father’s day, i was cleaning off a shelf in hugh’s closet. way in the back behind the shirts in cleaners’ boxes was a fathers’ day card our son made for his dad when he was 9 years old. adam had listed all the things he loved that he and hugh did together and illustrated each in his precious, childish style. i shared the find with hugh and we both shared some tears of joy that it survived so long – our son is 40 years old!
 
adam has a son, our only grandson, brian, who, to our great joy, is a near clone of his dad. and it turns out that all those things adam had expressed to hugh in writing and pictures all those years ago are the same things brian loves and enjoys with adam. and what a happy, meant-to-beness it was to realize that brian was now also 9 years old, just the age his dad had been when he made that special FD card.
when the kids came to our house for the big father’s day celebration, we took brian aside and showed him the card his dad made for his papa 31 years ago. he beamed when we suggested passing it on to his dad. adam was blown away to see written proof of happy history repeating itself within the words and pictures of the card. he was so overjoyed to see the love he had expressed for HIS dad was now being given right back to him by his darling boy.
 
i, too, revere many things written by hand from so many family members and friends. i keep all our calendars, too, where i’ve scrawled so many milestones of so many lives. one of the greatest losses of things written down that still feels heartbreaking is the big thick cookbook my mom always had at hand. she stuffed it with letters from my grandmother, little love notes from us, her children, old photos, and emphemera of all sorts. with 8 children, and litttle of her own space to keep her little mementos tucked safely away, i guess the old cookbook was her file cabinet. somehow, it just diappeared. i’d give up my kindle gladly, just to have one more look through it’s pages, brimming with such marvelous history, pages of favorite recipes dog-earred, stained messy with beloved flour-egg-chocolate cake battered fingerprints of my mom and me, cooking together.
 
i love this post, yvonne – it bought back a lot of wonderful memories. thank you.
 
love, XOXO,
 
karen, TC

I knew not what to say to Karen after Hugh died. I didn’t have the right words so I turned again to poetry and to something Seamus Heaney had written in Station Island, about himself as a father and his own father as well. This Father’s Day weekend, I am thinking of Hugh Sutherland and those who loved him, of his son and grandson, “taking the strain,” of the “long tailed pull of grief” . . .

A Kite for Michael and Christopher by Seamus Heaney

All through that Sunday afternoon
A kite flew above Sunday,
a tightened drumhead, an armful of blow chaff.

I’d seen it grey and slippy in the making,
I’d tapped it when it dried out white and stiff,
I’d tied the bows of the newspaper
along its six-foot tail.

But now it was far up like a small black lark
and now it dragged as if the bellied string
were a wet rope hauled upon
to life a shoal.

My friend says that the human soul
is about the weight of a snipe
yet the soul at anchor there,
the string that sags and ascends,
weigh like a furrow assumed into the heavens.

Before the kite plunges down into the wood
and this line goes useless
take in your two hands, boys, and feel
the strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.
You were born fit for it.
Stand here in front of me
and take the strain.

image

Art by Sheila Dee

Memorial contributions in Hugh’s name may be made to Hackensack University Medical Center Foundation with Multiple Myeloma in the memo of the check in order to designate the funds. The mailing address is 360 Essex Street, Suite 301, Hackensack, New Jersey 07601.