The Light of Common Day

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; 

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 

Hath had elsewhere its setting 

And cometh from afar; 

Not in entire forgetfulness, 

And not in utter nakedness, 

But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God, who is our home: 

Heaven lies about us in our infancy! 

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy, 

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 

He sees it in his joy; 

The Youth, who daily farther from the east 

Must travel, still is Nature's priest, 

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended; 

At length the Man perceives it die away, 

And fade into the light of common day.

William Wordsworth - 1770-1850, "Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"

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Dear Kate,

Mother's Day today.  If you can give your mother something, anything, the best thing, what would you give?

This is not a rhetorical question, though it sounds like something a preacher would ask so that he could talk about what you already know he's going to talk about.

No Mother's Day sermon for you here.

My question is genuine, open-ended, like life itself.  I haven't been writing lately because of neck pain; I am not coming here now to offer platitude.  I can't afford it, and neither can you.  Nor any mother.

A friend called me just now to wish me a happy Mother's Day.  Why? you asked.  So that she could let the memory wash over her once more, that less than two handful of years ago today she received a text message about her nephew.  That he died.  Made himself dead by jumping off a hotel where his mother also was.

My friend mumbled, still trying to reason her way out of a labyrinth of dreams.  Her nephew's statement was loud but wasn't clear in the foggy forest of memory, still echoing as he meant it t to be.  Lest you forget, mother, on your day.

What could have been done to make a difference, any difference, at all? my friend asked.  It's the same question I asked you.  All necks will finally lay to rest, painful or not.  Some rage against the dying of the light, others without a sound, lost in the forest long before nightfall.

That's it, the question.

Yours, Alex