Anniversary

[Simon Says]

This is a very moving poem , well thought through and tender. If it is a real life/death story and Cate hasn't said it is not then I find it much harder to suggest tweaks. After all, we are humans first and writers second.

Regards

Simon

[Manna]

Hi Adam,
Nope, I'm not on any of those new fangled social net working thingies.

[Cate]

Oh, Cate... this is wrenching...

The softness in your actions and thoughts pay so touching a tribute to your son. I'm so sorry for your loss.

My own beliefs include G~d and I believe he is there.


~ Lizzy

HI Lizzy,

Thank you for your warm thoughts.



(Edited to remove the later part of post. I don't usually remove parts of posts when they've been responded to, but I'm going to make an exception for myself in this thread. It was also very wisely pointed out to me that to much information can take away from a poem - I think this very true.)

[Cate]

Hey Manna, good point on the eyes, I was just trying to make it clear that the baby hadn't been born but the imagined items might take care of that or maybe ... I'm gonna think about that.

N$w as f*r the &od debate, I think y#u have a very g@@d p!int about the ~

~~~~

Hello Simon, Please suggest your tweaks. Although in this case I obviously wasn't very good at separating myself from my character, I am very good at separating myself from critique that I'm given and I'm always looking for ways to improve my writing. Believe me, unless you get personal and start calling me out of name, I'm hard to offend, I'm an open learner.

[lizzytysh]

Hi Simon ~

In a case such as this and many others, I agree with your human first, writer second assessment. Since Cate is welcoming the tweaks, of course, then that's a different matter... as time moves on, it helps, as well.


Hi Cate ~

Thanks for responding. Somehow, in the way that you wrote it, I felt it to be a miscarriage. Yet, for some, maybe even many, a miscarriage is considered by the parents, and probably most particularly the mom, as still being a child... with many of the attendant feelings of loss. It seemed that you had miscarried a son, a male child as yet unborn. For me, reading it, it was still a loss, even though it happened before his birth.


Fondly,
Lizzy

[lizzytysh]

I enjoyed your little exercise, Manna . Endorsed with a big Yep!


~ Lizzy

[Cate]

please see above edit note

[mat james]

From the garden muck she digs out
. a silver biscuit tin and carries it
. to the apple tree where she kneels.
... This spot
. where brothers play tag is better,
less lonely.

What a lovely idea/thought/action.
I think there are a few more tears (from we readers) in that not-so-empty “silver biscuit tin”, full of love.
That alone makes it a wonderful poem.
ooo xxx (hugs and kisses to you, Cate.)

MatbbgJ

[Cate]

thank you Mat.

[lizzytysh]

Oh, my gosh, I'm sorry Cate. I'm not sure, really I'm at a loss, how you interpreted what I said as my suggesting you didn't feel this loss. It was the reverse.

Was it, perhaps, this portion of my sentence?

For me, reading it, it was still a loss,

If it was, when I wrote that, it wasn't to even begin to suggest that you hadn't felt it that way, as well... or that I was somehow 'informing' you that it was and that you somehow didn't realize that. It was the reverse to the extent that I responded to that loss, born or unborn, with his being unborn in your situation.

I know and understand that the attendant feelings are all the greater with a child you've known alive and come to love in all the tangible and intangible ways. I've experienced that, too, through some people I've known and it's an inconsolable grief. Still, I also know that there are people who experience miscarriages and stillborns as a very deep loss and resent people just acting as though it wasn't the loss of a baby at all, as the child was never fully born, and that they are somehow being inappropriate with their feelings. My feelings were that you were/are amongst those. Some parents have insisted, to the extent that it's now becoming more accepted, that their stillborn child be given a birth certificate.

When I responded to you, it was from my own emotional space where your son was a real baby and the belief that he was to you, as well, and that whatever feelings of loss and grief would come in losing him, you had experienced. If anything, my concern was that you might feel I was making too big a deal of it, so I was trying to 'justify' my having responded in the way I did. If anything I said afterward seemed to suggest I was making too little of it, even to the extent that I would be minimizing or negating or not seeing your feelings of loss, at all, then it was just nothing beyond semantics and the limits of the written word.

I've reread what you've written and I'm not sure how everything went awry or what my subsequent responses to you would seem now to be referring to... however, this is to your posting regarding your seeming to be hostile and then apologizing in the morning. I'm very sorry, too, for anything that wasn't understandably said.


My best to you, Cate,
Lizzy

[Cate]

Basically I just gushed at you what I was feeling at that moment. (This gushing business is fine if I'm in a good mood but not so great if I'm sad, angry or upset, luckily I'm usually in a fairly good mood.)

okay so blah, blah that was a lot of words when really I probably should have just stuck with a sorry,

Sorry.


(edited yet again to remove content - I know it's not the politest thing to do but that's a great thing about being with friends - you don't always have to be polite )

[lizzytysh]

Dear Cate ~

My interpretation, last night was that you had seen me as being cold, that you had thought that from my distinguishing a difference between a lost pregnancy and a lost child that I had not in fact felt that I had lost a child.

It was not this at all, Cate. I wish you knew me well enough to know that I would never respond to you in such a way. It was the absolute opposite. I felt and believed that you felt just as you're saying now. My original responses to your beautiful poem support what I truly meant. There wasn't a single word or perceived thought that seemed cold. Instead, it seemed to me that you felt his loss acutely. With my words, I meant only to lend creedence to any grief and sorrow you were feeling. I'm sorry that my own words obviously failed me, and in doing so, hurt you. I'm truly sorry.

My sincere wishes on any improvements that might be made to your poem. Honestly, I don't feel any are needed. Still, I understand your desire that your tribute be as perfect as it possibly can.


~ Lizzy

[Cate]

k Lizzy we could go round and round in circles, I wish you were coming to the concert in Kingston, then I could buy you a glass of wine and we'd be done with it. Mind you you'd probably buy me one back and we'd go in circles again until we were both left drunk and giggling ourselves silly.

[lizzytysh]

Thanks, Cate.

You're right.

It looks like Detroit will be the only remaining one for me. I'll have a drink, though, and at least we'll both stay sober. I don't remember seeing "Kingston" ~ not even sure where that's at.


~ Lizzy

[Cate]

I don't remember seeing "Kingston" ~ not even sure where that's at.

oh that's cause it's not real; it's where I go when I dream of home.
Sometimes, I go there and meet a man in a room of an old house. He resembles my husband when younger and we sleep in single bed. When it's hot or the noise on the street wakes us, we grab our sheets and crawl out his window to make love in a shared garden.
Sometime I'm in front of a Chinese Laundry, beside a dark haired girl with chocolate chip cookie eyes, trying to convince her that we should go in for cheesecake and blueberry tea. I'll be honest, she usually says no but I know she wants to say yes, so I always ask and wait with her while she decides.
Other times I'm just on my own standing by the water, listening to waves watching for tall ships.