I'm reliving your last days with you. Re-reading your blog entries. Good old Machopoodle. You never did tell me where that name came from. I assumed it was a cartoon or something you invented with the girls. You were the only magic in their lives.
Gone too soon... too soon from our physical lives,
but your magic lives.
Your music lives.
You live
in our hearts
in our souls
in those eternal places.
Lit by yours, the brightest of lights, finally freed.
We miss you every day.
We love you every day.
We feel you in our lives every day.
No one will ever separate us again!
Blessings upon blessings upon blessings to you and your girls who you watch over so carefully. Ever the good and faithful father. May they always feel your love in their hearts as I do.
Much love and more, forever,
Sissy
For you, Mark. By Robinson Jeffers, who died fifty years ago, this year...and also had a fondness for poodles, which came up just as I was writing the above. *smile*
I am not dead, I have only become inhuman:
That is to say,
Undressed myself of laughable prides and infirmities,
But not as a man
Undresses to creep into bed, but like an athlete
Stripping for the race.
The delicate ravel of nerves that made me a measurer
Of certain fictions
Called good and evil; that made me contract with pain
And expand with pleasure;
Fussily adjusted like a little electroscope:
That’s gone, it is true;
(I never miss it; if the universe does,
How easily replaced!)
But all the rest is heightened, widened, set free.
I admired the beauty
While I was human, now I am part of the beauty.
I wander in the air,
Being mostly gas and water, and flow in the ocean;
Touch you and Asia
At the same moment; have a hand in the sunrises
And the glow of this grass.
I left the light precipitate of ashes to earth
For a love-token.
That is to say,
Undressed myself of laughable prides and infirmities,
But not as a man
Undresses to creep into bed, but like an athlete
Stripping for the race.
The delicate ravel of nerves that made me a measurer
Of certain fictions
Called good and evil; that made me contract with pain
And expand with pleasure;
Fussily adjusted like a little electroscope:
That’s gone, it is true;
(I never miss it; if the universe does,
How easily replaced!)
But all the rest is heightened, widened, set free.
I admired the beauty
While I was human, now I am part of the beauty.
I wander in the air,
Being mostly gas and water, and flow in the ocean;
Touch you and Asia
At the same moment; have a hand in the sunrises
And the glow of this grass.
I left the light precipitate of ashes to earth
For a love-token.
"Machopoodle" is because at the time my sister and I thought poodles were adorable, but being as they weren't very manly and were in his opinion actually rather obnoxious and ugly, Dad wasn't a fan. We were persistent though and it often became a joke for the three of us that there could ever truly be a manly poodle. Thus the name Machopoodle. We even had a little stuffed pink poodle, named Machopoodle.
ReplyDeleteI love it! Ben told me, quite excitedly, that he'd chatted with you and some of the high points. I think that little laptop we saved has a pic on it of the poodle in an office setting in an eternity mirror-type pose, on the back of a chair I think, where the reflection keeps getting smaller and smaller but the little dog is always in it.
ReplyDeleteI really hope we stay in touch. I've been counting years and hoping you'd look for us or we'd find each other somehow. You are loved...and have been always...and been prayed for every day and night, often, and Emma too. Perhaps not the same faith, but with the same intent and and Truth at the center of the wagon wheel...if that makes sense to you. Love you and am so proud of you, Aunt Michelle
Thanks :) And yes, I've seen the poodle picture. Very cool.
ReplyDeleteOh, and love you too.
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