Farewell to the Past that once was our future

I am having to say farewell to a close friend once again.  In April it was a friend in Hawai'i and now it is a friend in Horsens, Denmark who is dying. 

Anna was a friend of my families when we lived in Germany from 1965 - 1968.  She was my mothers weaving instructor.  After my mothers death in 2013 I wrote a letter to her old address.  The woman who lived there got it to Anna and we have been in touch.  I now know her whole family and it has been an incredible loving experience.

Today I received word that she is at last on hospice and beginning that final journey we all undertake.  I write now not only to pay homage to a shared past but also as a way to chart the course of my own grief and sadness and yes . . . even happiness from whatever time we shared together.  After all, it was such a brief moment in our lives she was my brothers and mine babysitter.  For years our mother stayed in touch and then . . . it was me.

Vic and I visited in April 2023.  Anna took me back to the small town and shop that we knew so well and figured so prominently in our 'small kid time' memory.  Days of riding on the back of scooters to go get ice cream and pastries, summer laden days of blue skies, blowing hair, green countryside and beautiful people.  Thoughts of war, deprivation, sabotage and nuclear weapons had no place in my head at such a young age.  For my brother and I those truly were the days of innocence.

So esophageal cancer takes its toll.  We will know soon whether I can go one last time.

Hawai'i Departure

 It never gets any easier to leave these beloved islands and these beloved people. My friend Patricia is on Hospice. Memories came rushing back from our friendship in the years that I spent here in this place that I love so much and I ready myself for the flight back to America. Because to me and I think many others Hawai’i is not America, it was never America, it does not belong to America. It is and should be a nation unto itself.  My heart is breaking and I think not just because of my friend, but all of them and my happiness that I’m able to love this place so much.  I think about returning because I have so many friends I have seen and I got the distinct overwhelming loving feeling that I could come back to a life here with Victoria.

Aloha aina. Malama Pono. 

Hawai’i Return

 I’ve returned to say goodbye to a friend in hospice   It’s difficult to see, to say goodbye but an honor in the same moment.  After landing in Honolulu I dissolved in tears   It is not just my friend  It is returning to my own past and all its attendant memories. I miss this place, people and cultures.  

Then it occurs to me it is also the sadness from the way in which I left in 1999.  I learned my father was dying.  So part of it is my father’s death.  That sadness and sense of being uprooted from everything I had known and grown to love and cultures I had embraced. It was being ripped, torn and up rooted from a life.  So I flew back to my father’s dying and death. The winter of my discontent, to darkness, sadness in unending rain, overcast darkness for months while I waited for my dad to die.  This is my sadness. It was my sadness but is no more. 

One Last Time Go I

 One last time Go I

To the edge of ocean and tide.

where memory and foam obscure the past

and the present bears me far from home.

Healing and threatening

the waves of senselessness and purpose

the beating of my heart

sand between my toes, under my feet

the endless wash and wave of time and tide.

 

This is my heart you and I know.

universal beat of blood and salt

so comforting in the days and nights

while your lovers heart merges

and beats as one.

 

Take me back

Return me now whence I came

the villages and islands of my dreams

faces of all whom I have loved and love.

Saltwater fills my nose and eyes and heart

Is it the Pacific or my tears does it matter the fear . . . 

of what was and will be lost yet gained again.

I shall offer my heart, the loving kindness 

of friendship, the common humanity and every day struggle and joy

and . . . and . . . and we could go on could we not?

So fare well it must be and a welcoming

of something we all must have. 

In the end of the beginning these words have all been said.

In the end is the love we have shared,

the things we have done,

the people cared for, 

the laughter, the music, the films, the drinks.

 

We had some times didn't we . . .

See you.  See you. See you.

On the flip side.

 

One last times go we to the Oceans edge and depths

to let us cradle and rock

in light filled sound of hissing and crackling

and crashing and rocking of our lives.

 

    David McCullough

    April 2024

There You Lie Down (a poem of my father)

 

There You Lie Down

 

Up in there, in the shadowed and sunlit glen . . . you will lie.

Scattered amongst the meadow where we hunted.

You a man, with your boys, your sons.

Wanting to be like you, yet unlike you.

Hunting for what it is to be a boy then a man.

 

You are there now, scattered in the meadows and soaring trees,

Your harrowed flesh and bone and ashes of your desire

Now, now, and now again, memories born and die again,

part of the fabric of the universe and our lives.

 

Soon the trees that are you will die and be reborn,

A house, a bed, a chair, a crib with a rocking baby softly cooing.

There you will lie . . . thinking what has become of me?

Their remains, like you, pass on and new growth echoes. 

 

There you will lie . . .

Scattered amongst the trees of memory and our footprints,

With sounds of our tears, our chats, our dreams of you, what has been and will be.

The atoms, quarks, and particles of an expanding universe

Careening to immutable laws,

Resulting in birth, life, death ad infinitum.

 

 

David McCullough

February 26, 20224

Six Years

 

 

 

For Vic . . . 

Six years ago today I was engaged in what for me was a titanic struggle to regain my soul, life and who I was.  Little did I know what was to come in this life.  But I know this . . . that being with you has been the single greatest joy of my life.  Together we make a great team as we live, love and laugh our way with all that we have created.  Thank you for loving me, having the courage to take the initiative to kiss me six years ago, that leap into the constant unknown.  Your wisdom enabled you to trust your heart, intuition and your own need for freedom to be who you are and to be happy.  You are the love of my life.

We Do What We Can . . .

 We do what we can.

To save peoples lives.

To heal and mend.

hold their hands in the midst of suffering

while doing a million other task

to look them in the eyes.

We cannot help those who will not help themselves

down the road to self destruction

who say they are ok with the dying.

once the dying starts

The tune we all dance to begins to change

I do not want to die

Most of us do not want . . .

to die.

Time and years.

life becomes tenuous and increasingly precious

the less beats and breaths remain to be taken.

 

    David McCullough

    February 6, 2024

Tet

Killing

Fucking

Drinking

 

Yep, 1967 to 1968 one of the best and worse years of my life.

Was there for Tet.

Artillery.

 

Got sprayed, coated in Agent Orange.  

Over and over. 

Not dead, not yet.

 

Green Beret got some steaks for my birthday,

shipped em out of Saigon.  Giant fuckin T-Bones.

Giant Birthday cake.

 

Yeah,  It was a good year. 

Too much of everything.

Not enough of nothing.

    Army veteran

    January 26, 2024

Haunted by an Image

    In 1987 while I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Fiji I met the then New Zealand Minister Of Railways and Transportation and his Fijian wife.  We got to know each other well enough that they invited me to visit them when I was going to be in New Zealand.

    I was there for almost a month mainly in Auckland but also visited Wellington.  I took to riding the bus a lot while I was there.  It is always a great way to see and visit with people and observe everyday interactions - the ones that make up most of our lived moments.

    One of the most haunting images I remember is that of two Maori kids maybe in thier early to late teens.  A boy and girl, small in stature, both beautiful.  They were in the back of the bus and had a huge zip-lock bag of clear glue they were sniffing and inhaling.  Their eyes were wide and staring. Unblinking as they gazed out upon the world.

    Who knew what they were thinking?  Not I.  At 26 years old at that time I knew so little of the tides and winds that made the world what it is.  Nor little of the history of colonialism, coercion, lies and violence visited not just upon the Maori but the other indigenous people of the world.  I do not wish to paint any of them JUST as victims.  That robs them of identity and me of any humanity I cling to and treasure.

    But still . . . that image remains with me to this day.  It speaks of oppression, lost culture, denigration, violence both physical and mental. 

    How does a culture come back from this?  I look to the Maori for the answers to that, they have spoken, they have regained some of what was lost and I have no right to speak for them in any way.  I can look to them for teaching however.  To learn from them and absorb.

    I remain and sit with that memory of their thousand yard stare and my interpretation of hopelessness in their eyes.  My projection of hopelessness is a more accurate statement. I did not stop to ask why or if I could help.  I had never seen that before and felt that it was something I could do nothing about.  Now of course, if it was my country and my moral duty to act . . . I would speak up.

I will always wonder . . . and hope.