The Words of The Greyone
Volume 1
By The Greyone
Fourth Edition
Table of Contents
Preface
Express Myself
Letting go of John
Echoes of My Father
To Absent
Anniversary Verse
Preface
Eight years ago, I started to learn how to mourn the loss of someone I truly loved. At the age of fifty-five, I also began to understand the meaning of loneliness. Using an online community dedicated to caring for those who become bereft, I started to explore my creativity. At quiet moments in my day, I would sit down and pen short verses and give life to my thoughts.
I have collected five short verses dated from the early days of my loss and now I wish to share them with you. I have also created a five-part audio series, published as a podcast.
I am delighted to welcome my good friend Short G Extent who has written the introductions to three of my verses.
Express Myself
Introduction by Short G Extent
This is part 1 of a 5-part mini-series of poems by The Greyone. In this poem, he briefly discusses the personal effect of losing his mother.
Greyone remained by her side all his life, and his loss was profound.
Express Myself
An over-loved and overkept mother’s boy is crying at the gate. He’s been gone and back so many times getting nowhere at all. Still sitting at her table, sleeping on her sofa, toiling in her garden and hiding in her shed. Looking through the window dreaming of life outside. She told him many moons ago “There’s nothing here to fear.”
The Greyone August 2020
Letting go of John
As a child, I do not recall being greatly affected by the loss of family members. Even the church or cremation services failed to stir me.
Growing older and having lost most of my relatives, losing the ones I have left is very hard. Losing my father long ago was a very sad time. Having my mother and sister to give comfort to and receive comfort from greatly softened the blow. As the dust settled, I even recall saying to my sister that I “had no need” to visit his resting place.
After years of peace, losing my mother was a crushing blow. She was the last of her generation and my last link to our family’s past. I maintained a regular vigil at her resting place for five years and only with the passing of the sixth anniversary, did I realise that my grieving was much less.
After seven years, my family has dwindled to one sister, one aunt and five cousins. All on my father’s side. So, I greatly mourn the loss of all but one first cousin once removed. Just the three of us survive our mother’s family. Since my sister and I do not and will never have children, it may soon dwindle to nothing. Yet my father’s parent’s family thrives with seven grandchildren.
As well as mourning the loss of my parents, I still mourn the complete loss of my mother’s parent’s children and grandchildren.
John was a lifelong single guy who, as a young man, finally stepped out on his own.
As a young man, I met him many times when he called, I know little of his personal life; except what can be told by a few simple possessions that survive to this day.
I rarely talk about Uncle John, but often express regret at having no shared stories. Once I recounted one story when I regret not giving his visit the attention it deserved.
Many years later I visited John’s resting place, to pay my respects, apologise for my childhood discourtesy, and leave a small token of respect in the form of a leaf on the crematorium memorial tree. I remember John every time I visit mum and dad and talk about him and to him every time I visit. Sometimes I remember the quote “All shall be well…” to express the hope that I have atoned for my small childhood sin.
This poem is my interpretation of his last day and expresses the hope that John went quietly and obediently.
Letting go of John
A kind and quiet, gentle man, sits nodding in his chair.
A cigarette, a cup of tea, a quiet, pleasant day.
A pale and patient beckoning hand.
A careless fag, a sleepy head. Enjoys a final thought. Then finally led away to rest.
The Greyone September 2020
Echoes of My Father
Introduction by Short G Extent
In this lamentation, Earl compares his life to his father's. In middle age, Earl wanted to avoid following in his father's footsteps, as he called it.
Earl’s father was a skilled craftsman. But alas his working life was derailed by the progress of technology. He never made a lasting home after leaving his first job and with weary resignation decided on retirement. So it was with Earl, after leaving his last job, he never did forge the digital career that so many of his kind desired.
In this poem, Earl expresses this regret and concedes defeat. Like his father, he left work in his mid-fifties and failed to forge a new career. He is looking back from an envisioned future where he is the “tired old man,” on his own and blown away by a faint grey wind.
Echoes of My Father
A tired old man is crying
Sitting at his desk
His empty house, his empty heart
His life has run its course
The little boy has faded
The gate now swinging bare
His old life has finally gone
Blown away in a tumble wind
The Greyone September 2020
To Absent
The years between losing Dad and Mum seem to have been just an interlude. As part of a loving family, I never thought about a time when Dad and Mum would be no more.
Dad’s departure was swift. Morning - woke up ill, Lunch – in hospital, Midnight – passed away. That was it. He spent several years housebound because his legs would not carry him far. But he seemed content.
Mum’s departure is measured in years. Starting with her stroke, pacemaker, medications and then dementia. It was hard to watch but we accepted the things we could not change and tried to carry on as usual.
Next came “care at home” with those dreadful assessments. They marked three years of decline. What distressed me most was the knowledge that other people’s problems always seemed worse than mine. To this day, reading other people’s stories makes me think how lucky my family was.
After a year without “mum,” what hit me without warning was that my father’s family was flourishing whilst my mother’s family was disappearing at the same rate. That fact alone still makes me sad.
After seven years, my sister and I still live in the family house, sit on the same old sofa in the lounge, tend the family garden and look out of her bedroom window as we used to. We have yet to fly the family nest.
When my loss weighs heavy, I find retreating to a quiet and lonely place comforting. In this short poem called “To Absent,” I lament my inability to move on whilst others choose to adapt their environment to their changing needs and I bemoan the fact that our neighbourhood can seem so empty and abandoned. In my previous poem, “Echoes of my Father,” I compare the emptiness that surrounds me, as being like a tumbleweed passing through the desert as portrayed in many childhood cowboy films.
I lament the loss of both of my parents and feel I have been deserted by their sudden and foreseeable departure. The feelings that come across most strongly are loss, regret and futility.
To Absent
An open garage. A tearful tone. There's nothing here, in an empty street. The tales, the positivity, they're all just lies, in a truthful world.
Where to, where from, the highway empty, in a lonely world. A dripping roof, a sodden floor, in a cold world.
Where are the warm human folks, that love and cherish and remember? They too have come and gone.
What is this gap, this interlude, that cannot be defined. Doesn't beckon with a bony finger. Doesn't call with a hollow whine. Everyone has left the stage. Pacing, sighing and longing.
Where to go in this lonely, rotten town? The world moves on, not me. Garages grow, and bedrooms sprout. I am still and alone, on stationary land.
The Greyone October 2020
Introduction by Short G Extent
The most obvious encounter we have with our past is anniversaries. Especially those of our departed family. Birth, death and sometimes marriage. In Earl's family of four, there are seven. Two birthdays, two deaths and one marriage. Not forgetting Mother's Day and Father's Day.
After his first year of grief, he was comforted by the story of one stranger in an online community, which I recount here in brief:
The first year is hard because you miss them and must live without them and you dutifully remember them on their anniversaries. But the second year is harder because after grieving for them for a year, you realise they really are gone. But after that, the grief does lessen.
As an amateur to grief, this seems reasonable. A year of obedient grieving, followed by a harsh year of realisation and finally a future of hope, that all will be well, it will pass and a new life will be there.
In this final short poem, the author visualises his future as an old man and looks back on his boyhood.
As an old man, he is still sitting in his parents’ house recalling his life with them. Never fleeing the nest, he feels that they "stayed long" and "left late". In truth, this is entirely his fault. As children, we owe them our obedience but as we approach adulthood, we assume full responsibility for ourselves. Even if we accept and follow their advice, we are still our responsibility.
Then thinking back to his younger years, he recalls himself as a mother's boy, ignoring his inheritance till it is almost too late.
Anniversary Verse
A tired old man sits quietly
Crying in his hands
You stayed too long
You left so late You left me unprepared
A little boy sits quietly
Surveying his mother's land
So little care so faded now
So very overdue
The Greyone February 2020