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“Those not busy being born are busy dying…”

—Bob Dylan

We will all die someday. & we have all lost people whom we loved. Many, if not all, of us find it difficult to face these facts. Nevertheless, we must. Memorial Day, which the United States celebrates today, allows us to do so. Welcome to Haibun Monday, poets. Frank Tassone, here, your host, and today, we write the Japanese hybrid form made famous by Basho. In the spirit of Memorial Day, let’s memorialize those loved ones we lost.

Ironically, a US holiday commemorating US military men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice falls on the last Monday of May—a month announcing Summer. Indeed, many Americans celebrate Memorial Day weekend as the unofficial beginning of Summer. But this day is still one of remembrance. Therefore, it is a fitting day to recall those whom we lost.

My first experience of a loved one’s death was my paternal Grandmother. She died unexpectedly of an infection. I was six years old. Because my mother listened to well-intentioned but ill-considered advice, she did not let me attend Grandma’s wake and funeral. I spent the next months in confusion, wondering why Grandma wouldn’t come to visit. I could not process that she died.

Mom made sure I attended the wake or funeral of my other beloved relatives who passed after that.

Some haijin have memorialized those whom they’ve lost, or whom others have lost, with striking precision:

Adelaide B. Shaw

A Blink of an Eye

my neighbor’s young brother died struck by lightning like that one second alive then not alive too quick to know that death was imminent too quick to pray to confess for sins imagined or actual to ask for forgiveness too quick to remember the good times too quick to say good-bye to loved ones

night sky
I blink and miss
a shooting star

CHO 9.4 January 2014

Jo Balistreri

Day of Remembrance
 
This Memorial Day is different. My father places a small carton of artifacts before me on the kitchen table—things I never knew he had. In seventy years, he deflected all questions about the war with “There’s nothing to talk about.” He’s in his nineties, and I wonder, why now?

secrets

out of the closet

articles of war

I dig out his aluminum dog tags, the size of half dollars; register the cold on my palm, wonder what it felt like around his neck. Letters from my mother, along with her picture and a lock of hair are enclosed within a heavy envelope. I put them back, leaving the letters for later. Remaining are two pocket-sized black books—Dad’s diaries. 

I open to the slanted script, ink smeared in places, fragments rather than sentences—a decimated Japanese village, little kids lost, crying; bodies in the rice paddies, bodies huddled together in fear—killing them out of fear. His handwriting is trembly, and as I continue to the second book, I hear the uncertain, quivering voice that haunts these pages. I never heard my father cry. These books are full of tears.

brittle leaves 

falling from the trees …

my tea’s bitter taste

I stare out the window. Flags hang limp in the desert sun. The Sousa marches that stirred the morning air are now replaced by images, death-stilled and sun-hollowed. How do I reconcile the spirited music of patriotism with killing for one’s flag?

I continue with the second book, father’s handwriting almost illegible—names of the dead, of the wounded. I hear loneliness and loss, despite the entries about the band he sang with on board his ship. A picture unmoored from its scotch tape shows the young men in his group. All dead except my father.

eviscerated—

the mouse no match

for the hawk

Together in the living room, we finally talk about his war, his years of silence, my unknowing. How he’d been lost inside that war. He said coming home to a loving wife and two small children saved him. He’d been afraid, ashamed, beaten. Now in his last years, he wanted me to understand.

flowering Katsura

in their midst

my father’s shy smile

CHO 20.1

This Memorial Day, let us live the ancient Romans’ “Momemto more” by remembering our beloved dead. Write a haibun in which you offer your remembrance for anyone who has died, whom you love, or with whom you have a connection.

New to haibun? The form consists of one to a few paragraphs of prose—usually written in the present tense—that evoke an experience and are often non-fictional/autobiographical. They may be preceded or followed by one or more haiku—nature-based, using a seasonal image—that complement without directly repeating what the prose stated.

New to dVerse? Here’s what you do:

• Write a haibun that memorializes a loved one, or one with whom you have a connection, as described above.

• Post it on your personal site/blog

• Copy your link onto the Mr. Linky

• Remember to click the small checkbox about data protection.

• Read and comment on some of your fellow poets’ work

• Like and leave a comment below if you choose to do so

• Have fun!