Keepers of Our Loss: Returning to our Reflections on Death
“Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence.”
Roman writer, lawyer, philosopher and politician, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 - 43 BC) noted that 'the life of the dead is placed in memory of the living.' In this episode, Dolli and I return to a theme we touched upon in the late autumn of 2021, namely the subject of death. Since then, Dolli and I have both lost a parent: for her, a mother, for me, a father. Now, as we keep a steady vigil over our memories, we must add further thoughts, asking the question since that initial episode: have we changed our minds on life and loss? Our answers may not surprise you if you, dear listener, have been through the same. While the topic might be heavy, we allow our philosophies to unfold in another episode of Rob and Dolli: Life to Life.
Detail of The Lac d’Amour, Bruges, 1904, Fernand Khnopff, The Hearst Family Trust - Bruges (or Brugge in Flemish and German) is a city in Belgium I associate with my father. He fell in love with the Martin McDonagh film, In Bruges (2008) and subsequently visited the city in 2010. It was strange to think that he felt no love or affection for his birthplace in The Netherlands and yet would fondly reflect on his excursion to the Flemish city and say how he could visit again in a heartbeat. At the time of the podcast recording, I have not yet visited Bruges but hope to in the future.
That evening, as he was making his way haphazard way, more than ever the dark memory came to haunt him, emerging from the under the bridges where faces weep tears from invisible springs. The closed houses exhaled a funereal atmosphere, window-panes like eyes clouded in death throes, crow-steps tracing stairways of crepe in the water…. And everywhere the chill spray, the little salt notes of the parish bells on his head, as if sprinkled from an aspergillum for some absolution.
In this solitude, that was both evening and autumnal, with the wind sweeping up the remaining leaves, he felt more than ever the desire to have finished with life and impatience for the tomb. It seemed that a shadow was cast from the towers over his soul, a word of counsel reached him from the old walls, a whispering rose up from the water…
- Georges Rodenbach (1855-1898), Bruges-la-Morte (translation by Mike Mitchell and Will Stone)
Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead), 1886 - Arnold Böcklin, Museum bildenden Künte, Leizpig, Germany
‘I know I won’t hear his voice’ - Christijan Robert Broerse (August 2021)
I know I won’t hear his voice
Memory doesn’t spill out,
It feels faint defeat
as the inside
Pieces, every fragment I hold
of him cannot
come together and fill a room
to speak.
As it is, here is the world, here is
the evening, one less
clinking of glasses, one less-fully
bearded face smiling,
bidding the hour cheers, lad.
I lift the glass, but memory, again
Whatever lingering remnants won’t
conspire or work to leave my
soul,
to rise together to lift
another glass to meet mine and
make the world true again and
whole.
I won’t hear his voice, one has to
Be honest, things are gone
So, too, the voice that
Would gasp and chuckle, or
Break out into random song,
Before a tale took over, him
reviving scenes
from a beclouded homeland,
old country dreams,
hours, sitting on his father’s bike
going to the sunnier, summer sea.
Or his work, daily escapades, the
Camaraderie
never endless,
recaps of funnies and feuds
The jovial millwright joking
About in his better moods,
it was so simple, once,
inching
A chair closer, listening, over a
Cup of tea to another retold romp.
Even the complaints and raw rants
him biting at the chomp,
Whether between him and a
Lead hand or someone in the shop
union fiasco as well,
Or between us two
our partisan arguments
Cross-armed, sometimes for months
those silences brewing
Remorse and regret I once defended
And befriended
like the
licking of my wounds
Were they worth it?
That silence now needs his side of
the conversation, someone to
tell me to not to get too sappy
with this poem.
As the ear yearns for the familiar
The things that come but
Shouldn’t have to grow
Birds in the morning, kids
at play,
But I cherish a sarcastic side
Comment before he would strum his
guitar
Or searching for answers
Sunlit by the window,
Pencil hovering, lead point like a star
above a crossword puzzle:
“Six letter’s, song of grief…”
Eyes are pacified by photographs
they bring comfort,
relief,
Rebuilding a lost ark for memories
To have their sails rise stalwart
Though the deck is empty of faces, no words…
even the best recordings are not enough,
they
Fail
And a greeting from him again, to savour
that from
even across a room,
Even in a dream where I know
I must wake up
the heart leans against the
wall of my chest, I am waiting
Still a child lifted up
I want to fool the day, the morning
Afternoon, evening and night
To convince the world he is
Not gone, that the world cannot be right.
The absence of his voice tells
Me otherwise (there is no more
Strumming, no more song…)
I speak as if to reach for him
His blue eyes will not blink
I have no idea who is listening.
With the drink,
With its tiny bubbles in cascade
I spend my day in another land
Despising the bottom of
The glass.
And I know I won’t heart his voice.
(c) Christijan Robert Broerse
Long Beach, Tofino, 2005