Dear readers,
Thank you for your patience with a spate of posts on grief. Perhaps that is not what you expect from The Dassler Effect. I cannot promise that this is the absolute end of such posts–I am a melancholy fellow–but as the first anniversary of my father’s death passes, they will certainly not be so concentrated.
I was quite surprised by this collection myself, though, as I went through the blog over the last year to find these. If not a exactly a narrative, some thematic threads do seem to pop out of these disparate vignettes–weather, light and dark. I should also note that the bookend pieces on the November 7ths were deliberately created for this piece, the remainder were more organically produced as the reflections of feelings on the day they were written.
The piece is in the gallery of the most recent issue of Catapult Magazine entitled “The Dying of the Light.”
Absolutely beautiful and so very touching. I don’t mind your posts on grief one bit. It’s a heavy part of life that we all carry with us and can relate to. Your views on your father and your grief are beautiful and heart warming. Blessings to you as you walk through this special anniversary.
Thank you so very much, glutenfreezen, for your thoughtful, kind words and for the gift of reading my piece.
I read through your haiku and truly, truly appreciate their craft and beauty.
Beautiful. I am always touched when grown sons love their fathers.
when at dusk the day
collapses, i feel the weight;
light pressed into dark
This one brings back my own crushing pain, the grief that still takes my breath away. The year of firsts is the worst, my friend.
Indeed, the first year is quite hard, though I am finding this second Thanksgiving and Christmas to be a bit harder, being a little further removed from the immediate loss and seemingly approaching the holidays more normally.
I am sorry that you have had to face similar sorrow. It is nice to have co-miserators in such things-folk who also understand. God bless you.
I lost my father suddenly in late December of 2007, Neil. Each Christmas comes with a sense of loss, but that loss is also a gift, because my father is in the presence of his Father and how can that be a bad thing? We are both blessed to have had the love of good dads.