I Think The Dear Are Tender - October 2010

I think the dead are tender. Shall we kiss? --
My sweet boy laughs, delighting in what is.
If he but sighs, a bird puts out its tongue.
He makes space lonely with a lovely song.
He lilts a low soft language, and I hear
Down long sea-chambers of the inner ear.

We sing together; we sing mouth to mouth.
The garden is a river flowing south.
He cries out loud the soul's own secret joy;
He dances, and the ground bears him away.
He knows the speech of light, and makes it plain
A lively thing can come to life again.

I feel his presence in the common day,
In that slow dark that widens every eye.
He moves as water moves, and comes to me,
Stayed by what was, and pulled by what would be.

Theodore Roethke

- I've changed this poem in my head, revised for Hunter, rather than for Roethke's lady. I memorized this poem almost thirty years ago. The appeal of it then, as now, is primarily in the sounds the words make as you form them, whether silently or audibly. A string of words like "long sea chambers of the inner ear" evokes a chill from the base of my spine, radiating upwards and out from the top of my skull. For the particular arrangement of cells that I call myself, words arranged in such a way are more powerful even than music. (I suppose that this is a kind of heresy coming from a musician.) And then to wrestle meaning from the words.... it is a delight to me. A delight in the way that only art can be, where what is most beautiful is also utterly devastating.
If, like music, a poem could have a "key" that it is written in (or maybe a better way to say it would be a "tonality") then this poem is written in the key of "tender". I have had much time and reason to consider the tenderness of boys over the last fifteen years. Having three brothers, raising three sons, I have been keenly attuned to their vulnerability. Their tenderness has schooled me. I think that all boys are tender, and yet some boys are particularly tender. My brother Peter was so very tender. I always said that Peter was a lamb. He could be a wildman, but still he was a lamb. He radiated a gentleness and kindness and would enclose me in the most restorative bear hugs you could imagine. And he is gone from here eight years now. And in just the same way, Hunter was so very tender. A wildman too. And tender. And now they are both gone from here.
It is, even now, in 2009, hard for a boy to be tender. I saw so clearly in people's reactions to Hunter how they felt about their own tenderness. There were those who were harsh with Hunter. And I began to see how they had certain qualities in common. They were blustery men, with these gruff exteriors, but inside they had these very tender and loving hearts. I think they almost couldn't bear to see Hunter's tenderness. They wanted to "toughen him up" in some way. If he remained so tender, he would be crushed. But I had learned from growing up with my brother Peter the great value of male tenderness. Peter had struggled hard to find a way to live with his vulnerability, his gentleness. But he came to own it completely. He found a profession as an ICU nurse that allowed him to use these virtues in his work, and he was loved by all his patients and colleagues. And he still got to be a wildman, taking his sons motocrossing every weekend.
Hunter was so like Peter in these ways. My little tender wildman. Like Peter he was physically fearless. He would try any stunt, take any dare - impervious to bodily pain. And also like Peter he had these little anxieties, about germs and silent, insidious sickness, - things you couldn't grab hold of and wrestle with. It is not lost on me that both Peter and Hunter died because their hearts stopped. Peter's aorta ruptured. A virus (silent, insidious) weakened Hunter's heart until it stopped. These boys, with their enormous, tender, loving hearts, died because their hearts broke. I think that their hearts could not contain their spirits, and maybe, maybe it really is dangerous for a man to be so tender in this life. But there was no other way for them to be.
February 15, 2009, in a room in the ER at Boston Medical Center, Hunter is lying on a bed, and I am sitting in a chair beside him. He is tired and sick and hurting and restless and confused. The pain moves around from throat to chest to belly, rippling through him in uneven waves. We have been there since 7am and he is being treated for dehydration, having tested positive for Influenza B (a strain not covered in that seasons flu shot - not that it would have mattered in the end). I have my head resting next to his chest, slumped in my chair next to the gurney, trying to bring what comfort I can. He begins to speak sharply "Get away, I hate you." I look at him in surprise. He pulls me back to him, saying "not you." Then, again, "I hate you - go away", and even stronger "fuck you - I hate you". And I saw that he was talking to the sickness in him. When the waves of pain were strong he would rail against it, swearing at it, raging at it. And when he was calm, in between the waves, he asked me this question "Mom, is God punishing me for something I did?" Oh, Hunter.
I told him that such a thing could never be true. God was not like that. He does not punish. These things; sickness, disasters, tragedies, are not sent to us by a punitive God, or even as correctives. They are either consequences of the microscopic workings of the natural world that from our macroscopic point of view can only be seen as random, or they are the consequences of choices that have been made by persons, to which not even the most innocent (or guilty) among us are exempt. I gave him the only thought I have ever been able to hold on to when things matter enormously. "We don't have all the information and we are told to pray." He told me that his prayers weren't working. I said that sometimes the answer can be 'no', or more likely 'wait', and that sometimes we must just endure what is in front of us. He said "I can't endure this." He said this many times in the following hours. "I can't endure this." But he still fought it, raging against this virus, that we later learned had been sickening his heart for weeks. A virus which has no symptoms in the young, because they are so strong, and which is almost always fatal in children. How utterly and completely random a working of the natural world such a virus is.
In the weeks following people would ask "Why Hunter?" as if this were a real question. The only way to kindly expose this kind of question was to answer "Why any child? Should it have been someone else's child?" There is unimaginable loss and grief every day throughout this world. How should I be exempt? And I think of Madeliene L'Engle again "There is no such thing as security. Only a sense of security." Since Peter died I have not confused the two. I am constantly aware of my enormous good fortune in my family and my friends. It is possible to be full of gratitude and also full of grief.
Some theoretical physicists currently think that matter does not exist. Particles are useful in theory, but not necessary. What exists is only the wave function. "He moves as water moves, and comes to me, Stayed by what was, and pulled by what would be." No one knows what "really is". But I think (feel) that this poem describes best what might be. "He knows the speech of light (there's that wave function again) and makes it plain, A lively thing can come to life again." "He dances and the ground bears him away"
I am so grateful for the tenderness of boys.