How to tie a Double Windsor

“Father will be in shortly to guide you into the service room,” says the funeral director. He carries a plate of freshly baked cookies – chocolate chip and gooey soft – and offers us each a bottle of funeral home branded water.

1. To successfully tie a Windsor knot, you require a certain amount of length. Ensure the broad end of the tie hangs lower than the narrow end. Cross the wide end over the narrow end and hold in place with two fingers.

A piper, bag droning reservoir air, to lead two generations lost, but now found together, through crowds of extended family and distant friends who steer eyes to shoes to stop tears shed, two generations staring straight ahead; sky to sea and back again: the song great granddad used to sing, accent dripping thick Scottish rhotic.

2. Take the broad end and pull it through the loop around your neck. Take the wide end and wrap it back behind the narrow end.

Uncle clearing throat, aunt already crying, sitting first pew front, the Catholic priest begins: stand, sit, pray, stand – we do. Three readings lost on tear smudged pages, remembering mom say: “we don’t even treat our animals that way. Why can’t we just let our loved ones go?”

3. Take the wide end of the tie and pull it through the loop across from the side of the previous wrapping.

Standing sure-strong, defiant eyes shining, I say: “I’m her eldest granddaughter, and am here to tell you about her life,” – a pause, throat caught, wet eyes threatening – “to pay homage to the long and slow goodbye,” I cry.

4. Slightly tighten the knot, and pull the wide end back over the front end of the knot. Be sure not to pull tight, but rather create a loop.

Her life: swimming, skating, golf and gin rummy, drinking, watching Jeopardy, traveling, and finishing the crossword puzzle every morning before the fourth cup of coffee. Her life: her husband – the dapperly handsome man who flipped her a dime at the theatre where she worked and told her to call him when she was old enough. Her life: her grandkids – all eight, four each boys and girls, love for some more than others. Her life: conscious beauty – lipstick and mascara and stockings and sitting with legs crossed, knees best friends. Her life: aware – of status and stature and marrying up.

5. Pull the wide end of the tie through the loop at the front of the knot.

Her life: stubborn love, for when her husband’s head caught the impact of the crash on Highway Two fifteen years previous she refused to put him in a home; against doctors’ wishes she refused to believe he wouldn’t, couldn’t recover from severe brain trauma when he awoke from the three-month coma; stubborn love saying: “I have loved this man for 45 years, I shall not forsake him;” stubborn love saying: “he has cared for me all my life, it is now my turn to care for him.”

6. Slightly tighten the knot. Make sure the wide end of the tie lies centered and doesn’t fall into the crevice created from the two wrappings.

Stubborn love fifteen years committed to an imprisoned life waiting: he died, then she died, leaving the shell of a body behind – casing sitting still in mechanical chair built specifically for her to hold a tired head up, mouth gaping, mind melting away, away, away. They say there’s no pain when you go like that, but a week without food or water in morphine induced unconsciousness ain’t a pretty way to say “so long.”

7. Give the knot some final adjustment and flip down the collar of your shirt. You have now tied a double Windsor knot.

The soloist singing: “when I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me….” Little sister saying: “always ruining songs, funerals do.”

Let it be.

xoxo,
M.L. H’art

Shanty

Weekend washed away, bathtub water gone grey, country memories swirl-sucking down city drain, I think again and again about my great grandfather, the cabin.

F and E before family name Downey etched on rusted copper plaque turned green tacked to sagging cabin door, settled crooked and chipped, old white tooth in ancient mouth, yellowed edge and fissured down enamel middle, cracked smile to greet guests, tongue door flapping, white wood-trimmed window eyes blinking: the memory of him is crossbeam and wall, 12 pair wooden panels for 12 pair ribs, moth-eaten sail stuck up in eyebrow rafters, great big brick flume lungs breathing life and fire; in his belly, the living room – carpet and couch and chair and table and lamp: the family seated together again, sharing story and meal and laugh and game and love –, and running under floorboards, his rudder feet pressed into sailboat dry docked for safe keeping.

Great grandmother cloth covering furniture loved, knitted up in sweaters saved for cold days, tender heart baked in wood stove, she is painted walls and framed photographs and the Aunt Jemima notepad holder new in 1930.

Grandfather tree watching over receding roof line, majestic branch arms outstretched, he is safety from the rain and wind, he is structure to a wayward family, his tall trunk leaning against Uncle shed storing scythe and mower and shears and well-intentioned handy work tied together with twine and kept stuck with duck tape, secrets buried deep behind rusted license plates and buckets full of things uncle thought might be important one day, some day.

On the back lines of family roots running under clover-spread grass, the name Nellie B hand painted white on boathouse brown – a memoir of the heroine who, on stormy night when waves leapt high and overturned great grandfather’s sailboat feet in water miles deep, saved his life and brought him safely home to shore.

The loose brick lining outdoor fire pit, the sapling tree growing next to the front door, the hand sewn drapes covering tired winter windows locked – me and my sister and my mother, we three the lasting love dedicated to holding it all together, keeping great grandfather, the cabin, alive.

xoxo,
M.L. H’art

The Starry Night Balancing Act

High and low, no middle between, I saw him on the street shuffling feet without steps to cross back and forth across the cross walk blinking red hand stop, blinking green man go, blinking be happy, be normal, be a functioning part of society, please.

Small animal eyes, feral black mud puddles sucking blinking light, sucking life light, sucking recognition, he said: hi girl; girl, I know you, girl. How you been, girl?

Skittish hands offering trembling shake palm to palm, nervous to calm, he said: I’m not good, girl. I’m not me, girl.

Intersection dissection of sticky situations, standing 82^nd to 109 and thinking: help, call, money?, food, shelter, need.

The basics.

Taken for granted after a tummy-filling meal and a bottle of wine, the walk home interrupted by a familiar face wearing unfamiliar panic, to me he said: Not okay, girl. Not me, not here. I was there, in Grey Nuns wearing gown, taking meds, talking, talking, talking ‘bout my problems, saying nothing, saying everything. Hey, you talk to my kids, girl? You tell them I like this, girl?

Head shake no, my steady elbow taking him to steady concrete corner, his shoulders caved like weak mountain rocks, landslide to rubble, he shrunk there on the street – smaller and smaller and smaller –, a faction of the man who used to, with toothy clown smile, blow balloon animals and make magic tricks happen.

Be gone now, girl. Gotta go, girl. Staying with a friend ‘round here, girl. Maybe see you again? Maybe not.

Shuffle side step steady pace into the crowd and then gone.

Bewildered, world moving slowly, motion blurring through tears welling over makeup’d eyes leaking sorries all over street corners, I cried for crossed wires in cross walks causing overdoses of anxiousness, sadness, madness, tiredness, those ‘nesses better treated with medications than conversations.

Hey man, I yelled. I’m thinking about you, man.

xoxo,

M. L. H’art

Pica’d

Toes curled around weather worn two-by-fours stained cedar red last August, rain pocks marring fresh coat number four to show two less shades in the sun, chipped red nail polished toes showing the same worn dents, a mark where the brush slipped when you delivered the news; standing, the juniper padded cliff an open invitation, I daydream dropping off the lip of this deck neck first into the decline, rolling shoulder to knee downward ninety feet or more to the base of the mountain, tangled pine needle mane, gravel skin, pinecone eyes, feather mouth spitting dirt. I’d fall like Alice: down, down, down.

But I don’t. Dinner’s on. I’d hate for it to get cold. I fill your plate. I lay the crisp white linen serviette across your lap, trousers stained with lunch’s meal when the earlier serviette slipped under the table and came to rest at the dog’s curious nose. We eat.

After dinner, dishes: washing six plates, washing six forks, six knives, six cups, six wine glasses, sick, sick, sick I get sick in soapy suds, bile bubbling up through grease fighting Dawn, I am so sick I smash plates, all of them tiny shards of eggshell porcelain with floralaine detailing in ash green cutting dish pan hands, pinching silverware into palm crevices until stainless steel steak knives bought on sale puncture life and fate and health and sun and moon and mercury and love lines, a blemished road map staining tea towels iron red.

But I don’t. I wash. I dry. I tuck leftovers into conveniently sized Glad disposable Tupperware and stack each neatly one on top of the other on top of the other inside the fridge to the left of the milk where you’ll find them later after I’ve told you it’s too late for a bed time snack.

After sleep, you snore. Fat throat working slacked jaw loose on its hinge till, dripping drool escaping flaccid mouth, you cough ancient phlegm from back gullet, a gurgling hiss catching wind for a long saw-vibration sigh of the uvula-soft palate encore, the same tune again and again.

Sipping wine one bottle at a time I think about breaking green tinted glass and eating shards like a side show freak, the pica magpie digesting slick slivers of gastro-intestinal destruction.

But I don’t.

xoxo,
M.L. H’art