Visiting Harry in Late July 2015:
I visited Harry and Kathleen last week. He was ready to entertain as ever, but admittedly "a little slower." He shared the happenings with the lawn, field and local culture–all the generous things people are sending and saying to him because he is dyeing. Sitting on the sofa he pulls out a folder holding cards and pictures from friends. I admire how enamored he is by the offerings of others. He proudly holds up a little piece of wood with a spring glued to it and hearts in red marker drawn on the base, accompanied by a handmade envelope holding about a dollar in change. This was a gift from his "first protégée," he boasts as he tells of a little girl in town who sent this to him because she heard he was sick. Then his punch line, "What if we all treated each other as if we were going to die...and guess what we all die." I nod, laugh and listen.
He too pulls out pieces of paper he discovered in the process of "going through my things." Little thoughts he had written down or clippings he saved. As he reads and comments on these snippets, he is, as he says "really going on." Nonetheless, I enjoy seeing him pull these thoughts, ideas and images from his past to amuse us and himself in the present. Before my eyes he continues the biography work I started with him two years ago. I find it beautiful to witness him active in his timeline and engaging us in his stories. Notably too he tries to share things that he thinks have a message worth thinking about.
I see Harry sharing these papers and the meaning he gets from them, but never have I seem him caught up by what might happen to these material things when he is gone. I am reminded that his life is in the process of leaving, his physical presence is in the process of decomposing. I witness what this phase of life is and how he has this chance to live through it with still a great deal of youth and energy. He brings people in with humor, sometimes crude and gets a laugh, but if you have spent time with him in the last few years I hope you too have experienced his lucid grasp of the miracle we call life as a human on earth.
A few days pass and on July 31st Harry calls me up to read me this poem.
THE LAST MOWING by Robert Frost
There's a place called Far-away Meadow
We never shall mow in again,
Or such is the talk at the farmhouse:
The meadow is finished with men.
Then now is the chance for the flowers
That can't stand mowers and plowers.
It must be now, through, in season
Before the not mowing brings trees on,
Before trees, seeing the opening,
March into a shadowy claim.
The trees are all I'm afraid of,
That flowers can't bloom in the shade of;
It's no more men I'm afraid of;
The meadow is done with the tame.
The place for the moment is ours
For you, oh tumultuous flowers,
To go to waste and go wild in,
All shapes and colors of flowers,
I needn't call you by name.
In going through his things he had come across this in a book of poems by Robert Frost. At some point maybe four years ago he marked this poem–a year into living with a terminal diagnosis, this poem was a seed for the attitude he has developed in his preparation for loving life in the face of death. As inspired the title MOWING THE LAWN, I quote him saying,
“I call taking care of my illness: mowing the lawn, who the hell wants to mow the lawn, but if you don’t pretty soon the lawn will be 10ft high…and there are tics!...so you gotta mow the lawn.”