Part of Me in Two-Part Harmony

On Thanksgiving morning I was half asleep around 6:00 am and words started floating through my dream. I could tell they were intentional, that they had a form and weren't just random. I chose to try to pay attention even though I was still mostly asleep. I could tell they were about war, but that's pretty much all I knew. Once the poem took form I told myself ok, I will remember that. I quickly thought better of that and got myself out of my nice warm bed and into the cold morning and wrote them down. I had a fleeting thought at some point that they might be for or from my Uncle Bob. He had been in the hospital and had come home that week and was receiving hospice care. 

We found out on Friday that he passed away on Thanksgiving day.  In talking with my Dad that day I found that Uncle Bob had been at the Battle of the Bulge. I don't know if I knew that already or not. After I got back home the second half of the writing came along. For me they clearly went together so that is how they are presented below.  I don't really know how he felt about the war, but the writings really felt linked to him somehow.

I loved my Uncle Bob. When I was little, every time he would come over to visit I would run to meet him and beg him to lift me up so I could touch the ceiling! He would happily oblige, with a big smile on his face. (Even when I was little I wanted to fly!) Then when I was older and going through a difficult time (which mostly involved me being the difficulty!), he and my Aunt Lee were very supportive of me. I still call them my other Mother and Father. So I guess for me this is my small attempt to now return the favor and lift him up. I wish he had received the card I sent him in time so he would know that I had already been doing just that. I will trust that he knows.

For you Uncle Bob, my other Father...

Part of Me in Two-Part Harmony

Lynda Allen

Part 1

Part of me

remains

wandering

across the mounds of dirt,

among the trenches.

Part of me

is lost,

no way home.

Part of me

can’t forget

the vacant eyes,

the smell in the air,

the anguished cries.

Part of me

can’t remember

the way of love.

So part of me

remains

wandering

across the mounds of dirt,

among the trenches.

One day

when my wandering

ceases,

that part of me may,

at last, find its way home.

Part 2

You close a door.

Sometimes it’s all you can do; you just close a door in your mind because there is nothing else you can do. You can’t ignore what’s there, you can’t say it didn’t happen, but you can close a door so you don’t have to look at it all the time. You can even pile things up in front of the door in hopes that it will remain closed. You fool yourself that it will work. It’s all you could do because we didn’t cry, we didn’t talk about it, it wasn’t our way. You just closed the door and prayed, and I mean really prayed, that you would have the strength to close it again when it opened at some unexpected moment. Because it would, you knew it would. A sound, a smell, hell, something as insignificant as an unevenness in the ground beneath your feet that feels the same as that blasted bit of earth. Some trigger that you didn’t see coming, just like your buddy, standing inches from you didn’t see it coming, and in an instant you’re there, right in the midst of the chaos. Like you threw the door wide and you walked right through into the past, every detail is crystal clear.

Or maybe it’s the part of you that you left behind that opens the door. He opens it from the inside; you didn’t plan on that. But he’s still there, always trying to find his way home, so sometimes he opens the door and peers through, just like you are peering back. If only you could catch his eye, if only you could let him know it’s safe to come through, to come home.

But I’m not sure he can see the future the way I can see the past, because he never got there. He never left those mounds and trenches, so he can’t imagine anything else, worse, he can’t even remember anything else. Well, maybe there are glimmers of memories, or he couldn’t find or open the door. 

When it comes down to it though, it might be that there is only one way we can meet again. That moment when all the doors are flung wide and light floods in, and out. Then we will stand without walls or doors or borders, with all of the fallen, and again be home, again be whole, again be as one.