words that need to be said

During these past months and weeks leading up to my father's death, my mom and my brother and my brother -in -law have been doing the bulk of the at home care-giving.  The rest of us siblings and other family members have been doing what we can given the contingencies of  distance and job contexts. It was loving and intense work and it  took  its toll, both physical and emotional. I said in an earlier post that I expected to learn, and that there was much to learn when a family goes through the catastrophic health decline and death of a loved one.
What is most present for me now, as  insight, these days immediately following the funeral and the ongoing and amazingly tender interactions  with my mom, and my sister and my son, and also with my brothers and my brother in law ( who is a brother in every sense of the word!) is the need to say the words that often get forgotten or dismissed as unimportant in the larger swirl of more intensely felt emotions, like love and fear and confusion and despair, and the more intensely felt physical states, like exhaustion and pain... the words that those giving and receiving care need to say and hear, the words that enact love with humility and grace.
Here they are: I'm sorry. I was wrong. I need help. I don't know.
I had expected to learn. I am learning. There is much to learn.

... I knew I could trust you

you cast your words 

out into the deep

crafted to touch that space

under my heart 

where your first poem 

was

rhythm 

motion & stillness

moon dance

swimming

sleeping

bobbing

gently 

whispering into my breath

bone

and 

gesture

a 

memory

you would call forth

three years ago

today

when I turned and reached for your hands

I knew I could trust you to reach for mine

The Old Skipper: October 2, 1930-- April 10, 2011

Life is the childhood of  our immortality

                                         Goethe