the song of the thrush

From deep secluded recesses,

From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,

Came the carol of the bird.

- Walt Whitman

...

John Prine sang with melancholy ease, his voice filled with the warmth of lived grief, coaxing emotion from the dusty corners of the old man’s heart.

I remember everything

Things I can't forget

He sang of little remembered moments and the momentous, of love gained and lost, the pain and dignity of a hard life manifest in the quaver in his voice. He knew how it felt to be alone with only memories for companions. And like John, the old man remembered.

I remember everything

Things I can't forget

The way you turned and smiled on me

On the night that we first met

The old man remembered the honeyed with the bitter, the sparkle in his lover’s eyes when she smiled, or how tightly she held him the day before she died. They had shared a dozen unbroken rituals. The repetition of any one of them an act of remembering.

His muscles remembered the weight experienced in his arms as he carried her across the threshold of their new home and the weightlessness of her body as it hung limply when lifting her from their bed to the wheelchair the month before.

His fingers remembered the feel of their daughter as she moved within her mother's womb just as they remembered the bony contours of his wife’s back in their final weeks together.

The whole of him remembered a thousand different things, the memories flooding him like waves, his shoulders helplessly shaking with the intensity of his grief.

I remember everything

Things I can’t forget

Swimming pools of butterflies

That slipped right through the net

She had good days and bad, bouts of terror and confusion in the night. At the end, he could not leave her alone, even for a few minutes without her panicking in his absence.

And I remember every night

Your ocean eyes of blue

How I miss you in the morning light

Like roses miss the dew

Three weeks following her passing, his disorientation at her absence was almost as great as his grief. Expecting to see her in every room entered, he often felt the puzzling sensation that she had left each of them a few moments prior.

At some unconscious level he still expected to see her again, her comforting voice and self-assured smile waiting to surprise him in the one room he had failed to visit.

Once the music ended, he watched the sky gradually darken over the little wood behind his home, remembering her when a wood thrush rang its haunted, silver bell, its voice echoing in the haunted evening stillness. How many times had his wife taken his hand in hers to ask, “Have you ever heard anything so beautiful?”

He remained on the porch long after darkness had silenced the bird, the moon rising as the first hint of the twilight chill began to stir the air. Something compelled him to wait as if expecting her hand to reach for his under the lonely mantle of night. How easy it seemed in that moment to imagine that she sat with him, silently sharing his company like they always had in the past.

That night was the first time since she had died that he had observed their nightly tradition of waiting for the thrush to sing its evening vespers. Eventually an owl hooted loudly, the sound raising the hairs on the back of his neck with shivering unease. The old man found himself wishing that he could share this moment with her.

A year ago, he could not have imagined life without her. A year ago, he had expected that she would outlive him.

But now he felt her loss as keenly as if a vital part of himself had died. They had worked together so long as partners and lovers that he could no longer imagine functioning without her.

They had often wandered the little wood hand-in-hand. But the little thrush’s elegiac song in the evening hush awakened the memory of their hidden bower with all its tender intimacy and ministrations, the one lasting ritual finally broken by Lisa’s cancer.

Shivering in the cooling night air, he reluctantly returned to warmth of their home and all the little memories waiting within it.

Each activity in his day served as a reminder of her. Every room in the house, every nook and bookshelf, every knickknack and potted plant, every magazine resting on the coffee table reawakened little piercing memories of her. He felt her presence like a phantom limb.

Once he finally went to bed, he lay awake long into the night. After sixty years of marriage there was much to remember.

And remember he did.

Do you take this woman, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, for long as you both shall live?

I do, he whispered in the darkness.

He remembered the comforting sensation of holding her in his arms as they lay together in the early morning light. Burying his face in her pillow, he could still smell the faint, musky scent of her skin.

But in the darkness the bad memories returned with the good. He remembered his helplessness in the face of her diagnosis and how desperately he wanted to tell her that everything would be alright.

Staring into the sleepless night, he remembered again and again his wife’s face as she lay in her hospital bed, weary and gray. I want to go home, she pleaded hoarsely, Don’t let me die in this place.

He had brought her home, and although they could have afforded to hire professional care, he nursed her himself.

Like so much of their life, they settled into a routine in those last weeks. In the morning, he would transfer her from their bed to her wheelchair and roll her out onto the porch to watch the sunrise. Since she could no longer drink coffee, he would prepare a cup for himself, and they would sit quietly together as the sun crested the little wood.

He fed her what little she was able to eat, held the cup to her lips when she was thirsty and wheeled her to the bathroom for toileting and bathing. He brushed her hair after breakfast and after lunch rubbed her feet, legs and arms to encourage circulation. He would push her out to the deck to watch the sunset, and they would linger in hopes of hearing the thrush’s ethereal voice. In the late evening, he read to her till she drifted off to sleep.

They rarely spoke in their last few weeks together. No matter how much water he gave her, her throat stayed too sore for active use. If she needed something she would write him a note. For his part, he simply did not know what he could say anymore, or what comfort his words might bring. In that sense, the thrush spoke for them both, its haunting notes a reminder of all that he had gained as well as all that he would shortly lose.

On the morning of their final wedding anniversary, she wrote him a short note. Take me to our bower.

He wheeled her out of the house and across their flagstone walk onto the trail at the edge of the wood and began to push her toward their hidden destination, still deep in the trees. It was difficult maneuvering over the roots bulging above the trails packed surface and after a while he stopped to slow his ragged breathing.

When still a fair distance from their destination, a fallen tree lay athwart the pathway. He tried to find an alternate means to bypass it, but the leaving the hard path gave way to the rain-soaked earth on either side and the wheelchair soon became mired in the mud.

When he could not move it either forward or back, Lisa began to panic and now desperate, he picked her up and tried to press on through the muck to find an alternate pathway around the tree.

Fearing his over exertion, she whispered hoarsely, take me home, Frank, and he paused to catch his breath.

Are you sure?

After she nodded, with starts and stops for resting he carried her back and laid her in their bed. Though exhausted, he turned to go back to the wood and retrieve the wheelchair. But she grasped his sleeve and whispered - Stay. She patted the bed weakly.

He laid down beside her still breathless from his exertion and she reached for him and he for her. Close your eyes, she murmured and he did. They clung to one another without speaking for a long time. When she began to gently undo the buttons on his shirt, he tenderly undid hers. Then they embraced skin to skin for the first time since her illness had gotten bad, their eyes wet with both love and grief.

But worn from the exhaustion of her cancer she soon drifted off to sleep in his arms and spent from carrying her through the woods he soon joined her.

Alone with the pleasant memory of his wife falling asleep in his arms, the old man was briefly comforted till he too slipped off into sleep. After a few restful hours passed, he awakened to his wife’s voice calling his name and sat up abruptly in their bed. In the miasma of semi-consciousness, he saw her standing in the doorway of the room in her nightgown, solid and immortal, her arms gesturing to him to join her. A moment later she turned and disappeared into the hallway.

Struggling to his feet, he cried out “Lisa,” and stumbled into the hallway to follow. But no matter how rapidly he walked she managed to stay wraithlike ahead of him. She led him out their back door and into the dark wood.

He stumbled often, once tumbling to the ground. But still she led him on like a will of the wisp glowing strangely in the night. He climbed over the tree that had stopped them the day they failed to complete their annual ritual of the bower. Forty-five years it remained unbroken. Their forever secret unfolding impossibly before his grief-stricken gaze.

He bent low to negotiate the heavy vine wood hiding the tiny glade and found her waiting unadorned for him, his precious, beautiful Lisa. And he stripped off his bed clothes and joined her in the damp leaves and the welcoming moss. Surely this is dream, he thought as she melted into his arms.

In the morning when he awoke again in his bed, he was surprised to find his arms wrapped around his wife's nightgown and wept both bitter and grateful tears. The memory of that night lingered in the days and weeks that followed. As if no more than a recurring dream he followed her many times into the woodland, but each time she moved too fast for him and disappeared into the night.

It was not till he awakened to her voice one time too many, that he finally resisted the urge to follow but rather wept aloud. His inchoate cries awakened him from his sleep, and he finally realized it was all naught but dream.

But the midnight vision of his wife he could not forget. Beyond all appeal to reason, he had desperately prayed she might appear again and again and again. But after his rude awakening he did not pray for her return again. Instead he prayed for a sign that she was at peace.

On their sixty-first anniversary he remembered their ritual in the secret bower and wept for the first time in many weeks. Though he resolved not to think about it, the memory of their midnight rendezvous followed him about the house while he restlessly tried to evade it.

In its place an all but forgotten memory returned.

Promise me, her remembered words raising the hair on his arms, Promise me you’ll not leave me alone.

I’d never leave you, he whispered as if her ghost was present in the room.

I know that, silly. Promise me you’ll outlive me.

I don’t remember that in our wedding vows. But she had taken his hand, her fearful gaze meeting his. And then he promised what no man can promise, and true to his word kept it, tears returning to his eyes.

After that, he felt strangely lighter, the idea crossing his mind to keep the observance of the ritual without her. So, he walked out his back door and up the flagstone path in the light of day as he had once dreamt following her phantom in the midnight black.

But this time after walking for several minutes and climbing over the fallen tree, a wood thrush guarded the sacred bower, chattering its warning from a twisted and woody grape vine before he could bend to pass beneath it. He heard a muffled giggle emerge that in more distant years might have sounded from Lisa's lips rather than a hidden stranger. Smiling knowingly and a little embarrassed, he turned and walked away again.

Leisurely walking toward home, he heard the soft echo of John Prine's voice in his thoughts singing -

I've been down this road before

Alone as I can be

Careful not to let my past

Go sneaking up on me....

...

The singer John Edward Prine died at the age 73, April 7, 2020, of complications due to COVID-19. His last recorded song, 'I Remember Everything' was posted on You Tube June 12th, 2020. It has since received 4.7 million views. For those of you who already know and love John, nothing more need be said. For those who don't, click the link below. You're in for a treat.

I remember everything - John Prine