“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be
astonished. Tell about it.” I came to read these words from Mary Oliver’s poem Sometimes in a round-about way. I went to a lecture/slide show this week presented by a guy who said this stanza was
once printed on his business cards because it describes his philosophy for
taking photographs and writing poems about his walks through nature. It’s the
second presentation of his I’ve been to and while I wasn’t totally impressed
with his first one I wanted to see what his photos looked like on the senior
hall’s new A/V system with its two curved split screens that allows the center
to rearrange the chairs so that no one has a bad seat. We’ve been fund raising
for this system for what seems like forever and it was worth it. This time, his flowers and
bird photos were like high quality greeting cards---so sharp, colorful and
detailed. I actually felt sorry for the guy because with his first
lecture/slide show there was over a hundred in attendance but only sixty-five showed
up this time. If my curiosity hadn’t brought me back and I would have missed
seeing how good he actually is at paying attention and telling about it.
My husband was an amateur photographer. He had a fancy-dance,
foot-long camera with all the special lens and filters and he took the kind of
close-ups I saw at this senior hall presentation. I used to think he got
interested in the hobby because I was into photography at the time we met but
I came to believe that his mom, with her little box Brownie,
probably planted the seeds and I just helped them grow by introducing him to bigger
and better gadgets. Mostly I loved taking photos of people but Don was into
nature shots and he ran with that theme. He was good at it and he credited Canon Cameras
for that, but the guy from the lecture said he gave the credit to God…“if that’s
okay with you,” he added, “and if it’s not, I’m going to do it anyway. I’m a
Christian through and through.”
On the way home from the slide show I got an unexpected
lump in my throat thinking about the similarities between the photos taken by
Don and this guy who calls himself Father Nature. They both love/loved photographing
the mountains, vegetation and wild life in Colorado. I swear Father Nature and
Don must have been standing in the same places taking pictures. Calendar shots,
one after another. After Don’s stroke he couldn’t use his camera one-handed and
I found him another that could be managed one-handed/left-handed and after I taught myself
how to do it, I tried teaching him. But I couldn’t stoke his creative embers
back to life. Long-time family caregivers will know what I mean when I say that
sometimes people die in stages.
Back to Mary Oliver. If you’re like me, you didn’t know
that Mary is an American poet who, according to The New York Times is “far and
away, this country’s best-selling poet.” If you look at her list of published
works, you get the impression that she’s prolific which begs the question, why
hadn’t I heard about her before? She is
81 and apparently is famous for saying things like: “I don't want to end up simply
having visited this world” and “He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.” At
first glance at Mary Oliver’s popularity I wondered which came first the chicken or the egg. So many of her lines fit perfectly in memes, on coffee cups and other
what-nots you can pick up in a gift shop but was she popular in literary circles
before she hit the mainstream marketplace? At second glance, the answer is a
resounding “yes.” Obviously, I need some
of that educating they talk about in them there schools. My knowledge of American poets
would fit into a Barbie doll shoe.
This week I also got to see both of my nieces at the same
time, a rare occurrence unless it’s Christmas. I had some papers we had to have
signed and witnessed in front of a Notary Public that will give them the right to
plan my funeral, more precisely to order a cremation. Evidently, if you don’t
have children or a spouse in my state, it creates a problem if you don’t want
your nearest kin (my brother in my case) to make that decision. These papers will
save my family some headaches after I die. And my body won’t have to cool its
heels waiting for the coroner to establish who has the legal right to say where
and how I end up. It doesn’t matter if you write out your wishes or how many
people you tell, if your next of kin doesn’t want you cremated, it won’t happen…unless
you've taken this over-riding step of naming a designated funeral representative who you're pretty sure will follow your wishes. Am I a cross my T’s and dot my I’s kind of person, or what? ©
