Designated Mourner

Jan 15 2018

A black ribbon

attached to a small button

pinned to my lapel;

handed to me by a harried man

who seemed anxious to move things along.

Was the schedule backed up?

The small chapel

over-booked?

This simple pin

was to indicate a mourner,

a family member

an intimate friend.

Whom I suppose is expected

to perform his mourning

in that very public way;

the ritual

of conventional death

in all its formal black solemnity.

Not deceased, corpse, carcass,

but the loved one, the dear departed

at peace

passed on.

Not dead, or expired,

but at rest, met his Maker,

the late . . .

called to God.

My father had died

in a hospital bed

where his body withered

and his mind wandered

and fitful sleep

came brief, but often;

a welcome respite, it seemed.

My mother, frustrated he slept so much

in his final months

and hardly touched his food;

cooking and talk

all she had to offer

and both feebly declined.

If only she had known

her simple presence sufficed;

but the need to “do something”

is a mother's calling

and a wife's declaration of love.

It was winter

and a bitter wind was blowing

and frozen ground was sprinkled with snow.

I imagined the trees

full, and dappled with sun;

but that day

their jagged branches were bare,

like bones, flensed of flesh.

Trees that seemed to stand apart

in their still majestic permanence,

indifferent

to the affairs of men;

the living and the dead,

the yet unborn.

A beautiful box was lowered,

its blonde wood, elegantly carved.

The closed casket

then disappeared under hard clods of earth;

a work of art

too briefly admired,

a piece of fine craftsmanship

a practical man, my father

would have bequeathed an after-life.

I felt detached, almost disembodied

as the funeral rite progressed;

pulled and pushed

through remembrance

procession

interment and prayers.

And when it was over

could only wish I had been

more whole-heartedly there.

That button still sits on my cluttered desk

where years ago I left it;

so familiar, I rarely notice,

such a vessel

of difficult feelings

I cannot throw it out.

By now, the box has probably rotted

the body decomposed.

Yet I wonder still

have I sufficiently honoured my father

or at all fulfilled his hopes?

The black pin, which I noticed again today;

a designated mourner

who doubts himself.

How worthy he is?

How worthy he was

when that hurried man sought him out

and pinned it to his lapel?