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Your Clear Refusal of Our World

My aunt Ros was organizing some books a couple of weeks ago, when one of them fell and opened to this poem…

 

For a Child Born Dead

What ceremony can we fit

You in now? If you had come

Out of a warm and noisy room

To this, there’d be an opposite

For us to know you by. We could

Imagine you in a lively mood

 

And then look at the other side,

The mood drawn out of you, the breath

Defeated by the power of death.

But we have never seen you stride

Ambitiously the world we know.

You could not come and yet you go.

 

But there is nothing now to mar

Your clear refusal of our world.

Not in our memories can we mould

You or distort your character.

Then all our consolation is

That grief can be as pure as this.

                                                      -Elizabeth Jennings (1926)

 

Ros typed the poem out, printed it and glued it to the back of a little chickadee painting photo, which she sent to us.

The poem struck me and brought me to tears.

Elizabeth, the author of this poem, describes the sudden death of her child as “your clear refusal of our world.”

Oh how rejected I felt by my daughter when she died.

“We created such a beautiful home for you!” I cried after her death. “We got everything ready. I dusted, cleaned, planted a garden, raked leaves; we hammered in every nail on the back porch so your soft, fat legs didn’t get scraped by them. I practiced Spanish and French so you could hear me in the womb and grow up bilingual! I meditated with you every morning, I read you books, I imagined your whole life stretched out in front of us. We were going to take you on bicycle tours, take you to France to meet your relatives, take you to India to hang out with your monk uncle! You were going to have such an awesome life! Why didn’t you want it? Why didn’t you want us? How could you leave me like this?”

But then Elizabeth says, “Not in our memories can we mould or distort your character. Then, all our consolation is that grief can be pure as this.”

Chickadee was and is the perfect child. She never grew up and became tainted by the many sorrows of this world. She never had a drug problem, or yelled at me “I hate you!”. She never became depressed.

How true are Elizabeth’s words to me.

Later, I reread the poem and examined the date on which it had been written. 1926. That was almost a hundred years ago.

Almost a hundred years ago this woman experienced a loss and grief so similar to mine that the poem she wrote is one I could have written.

Grief is universal. Joy is universal. Pain is universal. Happiness is universal. Who knew that a grief this specific could be so universal? I knew and yet I needed this poem as a reminder.

Whatever you are feeling right now, whatever pain you are experiencing, whatever longing you’re having, remember this:

You are not alone.

Somewhere in the world, and at many points in history, there is someone who has felt or is feeling what you are feeling. Someone has gone through what you’re going through. Someone is going through what you are currently experiencing. Someone will experience what you are going through in the future.

Thank you, Elizabeth Jennings, for writing that poem, and Ros for finding it and sending it to us. 🙂

P.S. We are going to be releasing an E.P. in honor of our daughter’s one year anniversary, called “Chickadee”. When you preorder the album, your name will be printed on the inside of the album cover, to memorialize you as one of the people who made the project possible. Click here to preorder: https://thelovesprockets.bandcamp.com/album/chickadee

P.P.S. If you preorder “Chickadee” for $25 or more, you will get a surprise in the mail along with the new album (it might be a beautifully hand painted pair of underwear, a T-shirt, a postcard, who knows?) Click here to preorder: https://thelovesprockets.bandcamp.com/album/chickadee

Nobody Wants to Die (what this song is ACTUALLY about ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pR1xujmLbo

This week I thought it would be fun to share the story around one of our most popular songs on the album, Nobody Wants to Die.

Nobody Wants to Die is the title track of our latest album, and set the tone for our album’s theme: death.

But when I think about what the song’s original roots are, I remember that the song arose into my consciousness from a very potent, and virile emotion: jealousy.

The way that I experience jealousy, at least these past 5 years or so, is pretty specific: I become extremely riled up, and talk about or imagine the offending party’s death at my hands.

I’m not proud of it, but the fact is it makes for good song-writing fodder. 🙂

So about three years ago, when I was afflicted with a case of such jealousy, I attempted to make Addison admit that he was madly in love with the offending party; but I could coerce no such confession from him.

As I sat down in front of the piano late that night, I decided that he wouldn’t outright lie to me, so in order for him to withhold the truth for me, he would first have to lie to HIMSELF.

So I sang:
“Well he lies to himself, so he can lie to me
Well he lies to himself, so I won’t really see.”

And I concluded that the reason he would decide to not admit to being madly in love with this other woman, was because he was afraid I might murder her if he did.

“Cause nobody wants to die, nobody wants to die
Well he tells me lies, ’cause nobody wants to die…no.”

And understandably, who really does want to die?

I did quote him in the song, when he tried to convince me against this jealous idea:

“‘Oh be reasonable, see this reason:
I want you more, I will always want you more’…”

But I concluded once again:

“He says this to me because…

Nobody wants to die, nobody wants to die
Well he tells me lies, ’cause nobody wants to die…no.”

Once I had completed the song and eventually performed it for Addison, it was pretty short, only 2 minutes at best.

Addison and I decided (once my jets had cooled a bit) that he should write his own part, and have the song be a conversation between the two of us.

He didn’t write what I expected him to, though his words were coming from a defensive place (understandably):

“How many times has she set her mind on some way she thinks things should be?
She tells me what she sees, and how she wants to meet me in her dreams.
So I accept what she suggests, ’cause I love her the best
But when those dreams turn into tests sometimes I got nothing left
Still I say ‘yes’ ’cause…”

And then he sings this part during the chorus:

“I don’t want to kill her love for me…
I would never lie, but I don’t want her love to die.”

So this song began as an unpleasant ordeal, but nowadays it has become a fun song to for us to play together, and I believe it will continue to be as the years roll on… 🙂

Click on the link below to listen to Nobody Wants to Die and/or purchase the song:
https://thelovesprockets.bandcamp.com/track/nobody-wants-to-die