"I was made to die but I'm here to stay," writes Vuong in his second collection. It's perhaps as fitting a theme as there is to be found in the collection, a work that seeks to tease beauty from violence, to find life in pain ..."
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6 comments:
What a touching and illuminating brief but spectacular moment. I loved listening to him speak of his mother and of death. Thank you for sharing this.
Sometimes I think there is something wrong with me. I don't feel loss or grief from the death of my parents. My father's was sudden and I did grieve some at the time. My mother's was long and drawn out and I didn't grieve at all. And all these years later I still feel nothing. I don't remember them on their birth or death dates. I don't even remember those dates. I have to look it up when I try to remember how long it's been. Life at my house was something to be got through.
I loved listening to Ocean talk about his mother and his poetry. It was beautiful.
Ellen -- Thank you for your honest comment. I felt profound relief when my mother died suddenly, along with unexpected grief. I felt safe for the first time in my life. When my father died in a long and drawn out way, I felt safe in a different way and felt very little grief. I'm awed by people like Ocean Vuong who experienced their mother's death in a way so unlike the way I experienced my mother's death. I'm awed by people who felt loved and appreciated by their fathers. All is not lost, though. I am learning that I can give myself what my parents couldn't give me. Oddly enough, I have felt more love and support from my parents since they died. And even more odd, I dreamed a few nights ago that my father put his arm around my shoulder in a supportive way that he never could do while he was alive.
Your parents souls loved and love you perfectly, even if their human incarnations were so bruised by living in this earth school that they could not show it in the way you needed. Ocean is a marvel to me, his book titles alone hold worlds of meaning.
Rosemarie -- Thank you so much for reminding me of my parents' souls and their love, past and present and always. Ocean gives me great hope in the present and for the future. The future is in good hands, in the hands of so many our young people -- those visible and those not so visible, working behind the scenes.
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