In an Elegiac State of Mind

Is sorrow best expressed through poetry?  Not for me; I seek comfort in music when in a plaintive state of mind. While some seek solace in words, I look to sound. 

Today is the first of two difficult days.  It was condoling to hear Barber’s Adagio for Strings when I turned on the local classical music station this morning.  Today and tomorrow are days of mourning, tainting March with melancholy.  Today my daughter would celebrate her forty-ninth birthday; that life stolen eighteen years ago tomorrow by her sudden, inexplicable death.

In Melancholy March winter wearies the spirit with memories of what might have been, forcing acquiescence to what shall never be.  In Melancholy March only music can touch my loneliness.  A life cut cruelly short; so much promise extinguished—forever. It is the unhealable wound. 

How can I ameliorate the ever-present ache, especially today?  I turn to favorites like Mahler’s Adagietto  in his Fifth Symphony, the Der Abschied (IV) from his Das Lied von der Erde. or the final movement (V) from the great Resurrection, Symphony Number Two.  Dark music for a darker soul.  Tobias Picker offers solace in his Old and Lost Rivers from The Five Sacred Trees CD, as does Antonin Dvorak’s Largo (second movement) of the Symphony for the New World. However, I think the best is Vaughn Williams’ The Lark Ascending performed by many with the finest performance by Iona Brown in Ralph Vaughn Williams:  Orchestral Works.

I find some comfort in Yo-Yo Ma’s rendition of Tan Dun: the Eternal Vow from the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in his Classical Yo-Yo album.  Mychael Danna has often settled my harried mind with his Skys album, especially Sky 9 and Sky 10, with plaintive sounds of far off thunder and lonely train whistles in the empty night.  With his brother, Jeff, the Dannas reveal the beauty of loss in Two Trees, the concluding piece in A Celtic Tale:  the Legend of Deirdre.  In the apparitional She Moved Through the Fair (arranged by James Galway and Paddy Moloney) from James Galway: the Celtic Minstrel she comes so very near.  Just one moment more!

There are others that go unmentioned. Each has their place in my longing.  Each helps numb my overwhelming sense of loss for a little while.  At least I still have that.

A Gentle Woman Has Died

I did not know Suzanne well, only having had her pointed out to me when I arrived as a college freshman.  She was older than most of my classmates.  Her voice major nearly guaranteed that we would have few classes together.  Our schedules seldom coincided.

Suzanne, always pleasant, gentle, and Japanese, seemed exotic although she would have been bewildered to hear that.  Her low-keyed, unassuming demeanor ironically mirrored my own reticence.  Suzanne was a Hiroshima survivor.  My awe of her was subsumed by a sense of embarrassment. Political and military arguments aside, she and her family had been through a great ordeal.

It is now, after fifty years, that I begin to know Suzanne.  It is now that it is too late to have the honor of her friendship.  As our fiftieth college reunion approached each classmate was invited to write their own life story for a memory book. [Her words, between quotation marks, are taken from her memory book account.] The stories were honest and amazing, but few more so than Suzanne’s. 

Her exposure to music began in a centuries old cathedral after the bombing of her home city.  To ease the pain of loss and displacement, the Jesuits working in Hiroshima began an evening program of songs to which all were invited.  “…many people joined to sing together happily under the beautiful star lights.  Of course I always joined in…”

Suzanne tells us little of the loss and pain of those years, preferring to focus on her opportunities for education, musical training, and travel to Hawaii which was provided by an uncle who had immigrated to the Islands.  When she returned home to work as a secretary for the U.S. Navy she organized two choirs.  Good fortune followed her and she was invited to become a foreign student at Mt. St. Scholastica College to study voice and music.

Throughout her story, Suzanne pauses to celebrate her “unbelievable good luck” and her determination to “accomplish every moment of the chance.”  Her hard-won achievements and lasting friendships were gifts, blessings. Each opportunity was embraced gratefully, humbly, and fully. Each new challenge was met with energy and a determination to “accomplish every moment.”  Suzanne succeeded at all she attempted because she viewed each ‘lucky break’ as a gift she must make herself worthy of possessing.

After college, her odyssey brought her home where she found employment with an Italian company.  She helped set up their Japanese branch.  Her modesty is again apparent, “When I was asked, being a person who loved to take any chance even with foreseen difficulty, decided to agree.”  She was more than successful, working in her home country and attending exhibitions all around the world.  I imagine that she grew to know every sales engineer and manager in the company.  When she retired, Suzanne was honored with celebrations in Paris and Bologna, where friends invited her to re-settle.  How proud she was of the engraved gold medal she received! “The fourth one received since the establishment of the company.”  Yet she was humble, retaining her simplicity, viewing herself as a loyal employee and faithful friend.

Retirement meant many changes.  First on Suzanne’s agenda was to get a driver’s license at the age of 65, a “big surprise to every teacher.”  She needed to have one to better care for her aging mother—besides their home was “located up the hill.”  While several “youngsters” failed the course, Suzanne sailed through with flying colors!

For seven more years, Suzanne cared tenderly for her mother. She “tried to make her days enjoyable and happy.”  It was her privilege to do so, expressing great joy when her mother was baptized into the Catholic faith in 2002 on the fiftieth anniversary of Suzanne’s father’s conversion.  

Suzanne’s modestly lived life of service, peace, and happiness has not been blessed with good health. The seeds sown on August 6, 1945 sealed her fate even as it radiated hope within her young heart.  She fought several cancers, painful and unrelenting.  Yet each day that remained to her was a blessing.  Her younger sisters provided care and comfort in her last illnesses.  Suzanne’s last wish for her classmates was expressed, “Praying for you and your loved ones that utmost peaceful and happy days continue.”

Suzanne died this month surrounded by family, comforted by her faith, and grateful for her journey.

aDieu*, Suzanne.

*aDieu—where the center holds and the end folds into the beginning there is no such word as farewell. (P.L. Travers, What the Bee Knows)

Planting Daffodils in November

Finally the yard chores are finished. The windows have been washed and the lawn furniture put away. I just planted 27 daffodil bulbs. Experience has taught me to forget any landscape plan that includes tulips, however beautiful. The squirrels have sated themselves on our acorns. I’m certainly not going to feed them tulip bulbs!

Despite my hopes for spring flowers, November is the time to contemplate death and dying. Plants have withered; leaves have turned and fallen, their brittle sound follows wind and footstep; the lovelier birds migrated towards sunnier climes weeks ago. The year is dying with the hours of sunlight.

The Catholic Church acknowledges our need to recall our dead with its celebration of All Saints and All Souls Days on November first and second. My daffodil planting brought to mind my dead daughter. It has been twelve and a half years since her death. I don’t like terms like “passed” or “lost her.” Passed what? We were not careless enough to let loose her hand in a crowd. She died. It’s not healthy to deny the word. But what brought her death to mind today was the small manure turtle thriving in my back yard garden. How she would laugh to think that her last Mother’s Day gift to me was a brick of s---! How ironic.

A week ago we attended a Celtic New Year celebration of Irish books, music and art at the Irish-American Heritage Center in Chicago. One of the authors who spoke was Anna McPartlin, a young Irishwoman with a tragic childhood and a smiling disposition. Ms. McPartlin read a chapter from one of her books. In the question and answer session that followed she discussed her first book, Pack Up The Moon. One of her comments was thought-provoking. The story in the first book deals with coming to terms with death and grieving. The young and charming Ms. McPartlin said that the characters in her book learn to acknowledge and surrender the parts of them that died with their loved ones. The role one had played for the departed needs to be buried with them. The special words and intimate interactions are forever lost, accept in memory. Resolution of the grieving process occurs when the survivor can mourn the loss of a portion of themselves as well as the loss of the loved one.

I’m no longer the mother of a young, intelligent woman with whom I argue psychological theory and philosophy. There are no head and back rubs to give while watching Murder She Wrote. There will be no co-written mystery series with a librarian detective. I no longer need to show interest in antique shops that feature familiar looking furniture.

But I plant daffodils and wait for spring. And I share a laugh with someone long dead whenever I see that turtle.

No Hands To Hold

Cultural anthropologists tell us that Americans focus on the individual. However, most women maintain an identity that is at least partially relational. Women need to know where they belong in relation to others, especially the women in her family. What is under discussion is the maternal line, discounted by those obsessed with patrilineal ancestry. Despite the secondary importance of maternal lineage in societies that value male offspring, having a matrilineal history is comforting to a woman.

This relational identity may be a reflection of our genetic history. Bryan Sykes, in his book The Seven Daughters of Eve, describes the unbroken and unchanged inheritance of mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) that can be traced back from daughter to mother—all the way back to first daughter of Eve, who becomes the mother of a unique genetic lineage. In his book, Mr. Sykes employs an unusual convention for non-fiction. The first part of The Seven Daughters of Eve consists of factual accounts of DNA, mitochondrial transmission, and examples of anthropological and archeological evidence for each era. In the second portion of the book, he uses the factual accounts he has established and writes seven fictional vignettes based on each ancestral mother. It is that model I will employ here to examine the terminus of the maternal line.

What happens when the lineage is severed? Connection with the past is betrayed. Links to the future dissolve. The unfortunate woman who fails to pass the mDNA to a daughter is caught at the open end of a fast whirling crack the whip game where the last one will most surely be cut adrift. Genetically, she is the terminus of her maternal history. She is cast off, alone, with no hands to hold.

What follows is the story of the last one of her mDNA lineage. It is the story of Jean and her only daughter, Maisey. Maisey died as an adult almost a dozen years ago. Jean has no hands to hold.


Maisey was hell on wheels to raise. She was extremely bright, assertive, artistically gifted, and defiant. Her exceptional intelligence kept her on the safe side of things, but just barely. The teenaged Maisey hated her mother, probably not without cause.

Because of her high aspirations and intelligence Maisey managed to get accepted to a top tier college where she graduated with honors. Accustomed to living away from home she couldn’t wait to move out and be on her own after graduation. Soon she married a man her parents considered an unsuitable partner. Too independent and proud to ask for help, Maisey worked two jobs to pay for graduate school while managing a home. When she had successfully completed her master’s degree, she began a successful career as a consultant in an internationally recognized firm. Not content with her accomplishments, Maisey started to work on a Ph.D.

As the years went on, the emnity between mother and daughter dissolved. The once deadly enemies became friends. Their friendship was based on mutual respect and love. Both women had matured. Jean could finally say that the Maisey of old had “turned out really, really well.”

When Maisey and her husband purchased their first home, Jean planted bushes and flowers in Maisey’s garden when her daughter was too busy with work and school. Dad mowed the lawn. Jean wallpapered her daughter’s house while Dad did repairs. Maisey, herself, would tackle any job. She and her Dad remodeled the bathroom. Maisey took on the entire ceramic tile floor by herself. Parents and daughter established a close and mutually respectful relationship.

Often Maisey initiated activities. Maisey would drag Jean to antique stores where the daughter, who had a good eye for such things, usually found a treasure. On Sundays Maisey and her husband would come to dinner. While Dad was clearing up, Maisey and Jean settled on the couch to watch their favorite TV detective. Of course, a back rub for Maisey was always on the schedule. They always argued about whodunit and discussed a mystery they would write together. Maisey had the talent; Jean the background. They would begin just as soon as the Ph.D. was finished—only one class and her dissertation remained. Those were good years. If only Jean knew how precious and short they would be.


The phone call came after 10:30 in the evening. Jean was in the shower when her husband called to her. Word had come from a distant state. Maisey was dead: sudden death: far from home: alone. It is not something you willingly believe. On the previous day they had celebrated Maisey’s birthday. Five days later Jean and her husband would experience the heartbreak of burying their beloved daughter. This was a nightmare from which Jean would never waken.

Escape remains impossible as the quotidian activities of life intrude. Jean watches as the laughing mother and her daughter shop together for shoes. In a local restaurant she sees a mom treating her daughter to lunch. Jean longs to be like friends and relatives who can care for their daughter’s children, and who are honored in their daughter’s homes. As she and her husband age there is no daughter to say, “Sure, I’ll drive you to the doctor’s office, Mom.”

Jean cannot escape wanting what she can never have—simple, normal family relationships. Each time she sees the shoppers, diners, grandchildren, she loses Maisey all over again. How many times must Maisey die! The pull of mDNA is relentless. Jean no longer belongs.

Envy and disappointment are ever present. This creates guilt as well as a gulf in her relationships. While rejoicing in other’s good fortune, the bitter taste of disconnection sometimes intrudes. In As You Like It, Shakespeare wrote, “O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes!” Jean knows that unpalatable envy and bitterness are impossible to escape. Ancient links have been severed. Jean is adrift. She has no hands to hold.