Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night – by Susan Jackson
To Ryan, Lindsay, and Zach:
“Do not go gentle into that good night, / Rage, rage against the dying of the light” Dylan Thomas
Your dad did not go gently into the night. True to his proud, determined, hard-headed self, he would not give up an inch to his disease until it was wrenched from him. Even then he would fight to regain what was wrestled away. About a year and half ago, your dad invited a musician friend to see Uncle Steve’s music room – filled to the rafters with trumpets, organs, and accordions. The room is on the third floor. Your dad was set upon climbing those stairs even though he needed a walker and could barely lift his feet. I asked him to sit by our woodstove and have a beer, save his energy. He replied: “I treasure going up those stairs. I know in a few months I will no longer be able to. I will do stairs as long as I possibly can.” And, he did. What would have taken you one minute took him thirty. But, he did it – and had a good time up in the music room, seated in your Uncle’s barber chair, swapping stories and sharing jokes.
This is what your dad taught me the last few years: cherish. He cherished every remnant, every drop of normal, active life he could wring out of his weakening body. Every hockey or lacrosse game, he wanted a full view – no compromise. Another concert, road trip, dinner with a friend – “get me in the van and let’s go, now”. Oh, and by the way, “… Kirk, please light my cigar. Let’s sit out on the porch and look out at the stars.” “Pass the wine please, I would like the big green straw.”
He cherished each of you – and your new member of the family, Wysteria. He cherished your friends, and basked in the laughter and conversations you all shared about the normal things of life, whether listening from his chair or lying in his bed as you conversed in the kitchen.
You know this – your dad was, continues to be, a tornado-like force of nature. I liken him to a prism stoked by a fire from within, the colors flashing forth – all colors, all directions, all the time and all at once. Your Uncle Steve shared with me a funny story on a road trip to visit Ryan and Wysteria in Vermont, in June 2005. To me, this little story captures his multi-faceted, restless, kinetic energy. They were in Connecticut, having taken a detour to sample a huge flea market. Leaving the flea market, they stopped so Uncle Steve could get a cup of coffee. Back on the road, and sixty miles later, Uncle Steve began rummaging around the backseat. Your dad asked: “What are you looking for?” He was perturbed that Uncle Steve was disassembling a neatly organized back seat full of stuff, with an electric shaver tucked on top. Your Uncle replied – “I am looking for that trumpet I just bought.” Whereupon you dad said: “Oh Sh**!” And, immediately pulled off the road, stopped the car, got out and pulled a trumpet case off the car roof. He asked your uncle: “Is this what you were looking for?” Taken aback, Uncle Steve said: “Yes! How did it get on the roof of the car?” Your dad replied: “Well, while you were getting coffee I decided to shave and clean up the car.” Uncle Steve cried: “I was only gone a few minutes!” Your dad, puzzled by Steve’s question, replied: “Yeah, I had some time.”
This little vignette exemplifies your dad – sparking on all cylinders at once, all the time. The tales from the kitchen are fabled.
Your dad was funny. He was so funny. His humor was kind, self-deprecating, quizzical and mischievous. And, he kept his humor through out his struggle with ALS – through humor facing his pain, sorrow and fear. It helped keep him connected with the life and the people he cherished. He wanted very much to be brave – and he was. Your Aunt Nancy shared with me one of the readings your dad liked a lot – and had read to him frequently this past winter: “God and I are like two fat people in a very small rowboat, we keep bumping into each other.” He would smile and nod his head whenever she read this to him.
When your dad shone his light on me, like a laser beam, I felt energized, uplifted, colorized by his attention and energy. The day following his death, I was standing on the shoreline of Todd’s Point – a place where he spent so much time and is today still alive with his presence. Nana Beau and Aunt Nancy were near by. I was staring at the water, lost in my grief, fixated on how much he suffered the last few months – trapped in his prism here on earth that had become a prison for him. I was to go down to your home to be with him the day that he died – and was stuck on how I did not get there, did not have one more chance to see him, to hold his hand, to tell him how much I loved and treasured him.
I lifted my eyes and looked out at the western horizon – and was instantly enveloped in a vivid sunset – the colors spanning every possible hue of orange from saffron to deep tangerine. The clouds were light and like feathers pointing in all directions, skittering across the sky and lit up by the setting sun. The colors and vibrancy shook me out of the downward place where I was stuck – on how your dad was, not as he is now. Your dad’s energy and internal colors were now free, radiating up and out. I will cherish and keep that sunset in my heart – for to me, that is your dad’s new home. As the sunset began to dim that evening, my heart pleaded “not yet.” But, I recalled the beautiful passage from “Gone from my sight.” As the ship sailed from the view of the writer, someone else on the other side of the ocean was welcoming the ship with the greeting: “Here he comes.!” For eyes beyond my horizon, they were seeing his sunrise.
I would like to close with an excerpt from Archibald MacLeish’s preface to his play JB. His sentiment has guided my life since I was 18.
“A few days before he died, the greatest of modern poets …William Butler Yeats, wrote to a friend that he had found what, all his life, he had been looking for … an answer made of life: “Man can embody truth but cannot know it.” Which means to me that man can live his truth, his deepest truth but cannot speak it. It is for this reason that love becomes the ultimate human answer to the ultimate human question. Love, in reason’s terms, answers nothing. We say that Amor vincit omnia but in truth love conquerors nothing - certainly not death- certainly not chance. What love does is to affirm. It affirms the worth of life in spite of (the sorrow in) life. It affirms the wonder and beauty of the human creature ... It affirms life with life.”
That is what your dad did.
Love, Aunt Susan, March 6, 2008
