Dark Cloud Country: Chapter 5, Ivy-Veiled Boughs

"Life, as Malcolm Guite writes, is a 'mess of desolation laced with hope, communion with a whisky on the side,' and I cannot help but think this is also true for death."

This is Chapter 5, “Ivy-Veiled Boughs” of my newest book, Dark Cloud Country: The Four Relationships of Regeneration. You can buy the book here.

Ivy-Veiled Boughs

He was dying. He had been dying for many years and I remember his dying well.

Death, a coarse chin, propriety abnegated by pain. A slow walk, a mathematical devolution of aged velocity, of position over time. A gentle gaze, a shimmer fabricated by his many years—not so many. A soft voice, a love masked agony, an instrument of immortality. He was aged but he was also dying. What does a child know about pain and war and death and the love that energizes passion’s permutation into peace? What does a child know about death and grief and love? What does a child know?

Life, as Malcolm Guite writes, is a “mess of desolation laced with hope, communion with a whisky on the side,” and I cannot help but think this is also true for death. My Papa watched me play from his chair in the corner of the living room and he said nothing. He said everything, but I had not the ears. Blocks and crayons and board games and cheesy-doodles and laughter—nothing ahead, nothing behind, just now, a stillness suspended in the serene embrace of youth. My grandmother—Nana, we lovingly called her—would often play with us on the floor next to him or at the kitchen table behind him. But we never played in front of him. Why? What does a child know?