Testament

 My paternal grandparents George and Anna Swanson on their wedding day.

Beginning at a young age, my parents impressed upon me the sacredness of  remembering our dead in tangible ways. And so every Memorial Day weekend, our family would not only journey to the local cemetery in Woodhull, Illinois, where my paternal grandparents, George and Anna Swanson are laid to rest, but we would also make the drive three hours away to the small town of Albia, Iowa, where my grandparents, great grandparents, and great great grandparents, as well as many others from my mother's family are buried. Over the years, my parents have faithfully gathered flowers to be placed on the stones bearing the names of Swanson and Perry, extracted the ubiquitous weeds which inevitably surround the graves, and visibly acknowledged with these acts that our loved ones are not forgotten. And as Time, that great force of life, has lapsed by, new places of visitation have appeared for my parents' siblings who have also passed.

There is really nothing notable about us Swansons and Perrys. We were and are pretty ordinary but hearty folk. We were mainly farmers who grew our own food not because it was fashionable or because we hoped to make a political statement, but because it was necessary for our survival. We grew crops out of our small chunk of land, harvested, and canned them, thus providing nourishment for our family throughout the miserable and lengthy winters bequeathed to those living in the Midwest. We climbed into blackness and forced our bodies into a reluctant earth, extracting costly black rock so that we could pay the bills, never considering that what we were doing might eventually kill us. We worked second jobs for those a bit more affluent than us building roads and working their land. We were hard working, honest people of the earth, manual laborers who were probably considered to be poor and might have been, but somehow we managed to love each other and create a new generation of individuals bearing our names in spite of our lack of material wealth.

To my parents, thank you for fostering within me a respect for life by not shying me away from death. And to those Swansons and Perrys who have passed from this life into the the next, may your memory eternal! "Beneath this stone" a Swanson and a Perry "is planted in his home land, as he wanted. He has come to the gathering of his kin, among whom some were worthy men."  

James and Beryl Perry holding their first born child, my mother. She would be the oldest of four more to come. My grandfather died of lung cancer in his early forties when my mother was only twelve. My grandmother never remarried and raised her five children on her own.

"Testament"

Wendell Berry

Poetry Wednesday

And now to the Abyss I pass
Of that Unfathomable Grass...

1.
Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath
Grows large and free in air, don't call it death --
A word to enrich the undertaker and inspire
His surly art of imitating life; conspire
Against him. Say that my body cannot now
Be improved upon; it has no fault to show
To the sly cosmetician. Say that my flesh
Has a perfect compliance with the grass
Truer than any it could have striven for.
You will recognize the earth in me, as before
I wished to know it in myself: my earth
That has been my care and faithful charge from birth,
And toward which all my sorrows were surely bound,
And all my hopes. Say that I have found
A good solution, and am on my way
To the roots. And say I have left my native clay
At last, to be a traveler; that too will be so.
Traveler to where? Say you don't know.

2.
But do not let your ignorance
Of my spirit's whereabouts dismay
You, or overwhelm your thoughts.
Be careful not to say

Anything too final. Whatever
Is unsure is possible, and life is bigger
Than flesh. Beyond reach of thought
Let imagination figure

Your hope. That will be generous
To me and to yourselves. Why settle
For some know-it-all's despair
When the dead may dance to the fiddle

Hereafter, for all anybody knows?
And remember that the Heavenly soil
Need not be too rich to please
One who was happy in Port Royal.

I may be already heading back,
A new and better man, toward
That town. The thought's unreasonable,
But so is life, thank the Lord!

3.
So treat me, even dead,
As a man who has a place
To go, and something to do.
Don't muck up my face

With wax and powder and rouge
As one would prettify
An unalterable fact
To give bitterness the lie.

Admit the native earth
My body is and will be,
Admit its freedom and
Its changeability.

Dress me in the clothes
I wore in the day's round.
Lay me in a wooden box.
Put the box in the ground.

4.
Beneath this stone a Berry is planted
In his home land, as he wanted.

He has come to the gathering of his kin,
Among whom some were worthy men,

Farmers mostly, who lived by hand,
But one was a cobbler from Ireland,

Another played the eternal fool
By riding on a circus mule

To be remembered in grateful laughter
Longer than the rest. After

Doing that they had to do
They are at ease here. Let all of you

Who yet for pain find force and voice
Look on their peace, and rejoice.