Sandra Heska King

daring to open doors

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Where is Home?

June 1, 2016 By Sandra Heska King

cemetery pond

“I know it’s morbid, my daughter says, “but I’ve been thinking about it, and so I’ll ask.
If you and Dad die, is there enough life insurance to fly you home and bury you?”
She asks him the same question over the phone,
and he assures her there is plenty and more.

I tell her I don’t want to be cremated, and please don’t smear red lipstick on me.
I want my fingers and toes to be manned and pedded and polished pretty.
I forget to tell her to fix my hair natural, like every day,
but make sure no gray is peeking from my part.

“Maybe we’ll stay in Florida,” I muse, “or you could just toss us into the ocean.”
“I thought about that,” she laughs, “but you don’t like the ocean.”
The truth is I do like the ocean,
but I don’t like the idea of being eaten by a shark–dead or alive.
I read there are man-eating Nile crocodiles down there now
besides alligators and Burmese pythons.
I might not be safe dead or alive.

I think about this conversation as I decorate the graves.
I’ve always said I want to lie in one of those empty spaces
under the family headstone in Maple Hill when I go.
Because I’m a King now, and this is where Kings live, here in section K.
This is home.

I smile because I remember my mom’s at home in section H in the place of my growing up.
Except I’m still growing up, and now I’m not sure where home is, where I’ll call home,
whether I’ll call home “home” again.
I mark it on my mental to-do list,
“Take at least one more long walk in this place before we go,”
and hope it’s a long time before I finally go.

When I’ve watered the red geraniums and white petunias
with a can that hangs from a nearby spigot,
I get back in the red Jeep where hope hangs from the rear-view mirror
and wind my way out of the cemetery to return home,
to prepare more for leaving home.
I want to stop and stand a while before the old family site,
where Erastus and Lurana and others have remained since the late 1800s,
but I can never remember where it is, and I need to get things done.
We’ll linger longer when my husband comes home and can lead me there.

When I round the final curve on the way out, I see the pond exposed
and a new drive that seems to circle around to the other side.
It looks like they’re expanding the homestead.
Three goose families swim in the center of the water,
and I think it might be nice to lie next to the shore.
I stop and get out, line up the best view in my lens and bring it into focus.

Cemetery pond flowers

On the way home, I stop at Dairy Queen for a mini turtle Blizzard
and wonder if I’ll ever see another blizzard.
I sort more stuff, divide it into to-keep, throw-away and giveaway piles,
more of the latter,
and I feel lighter with less.

This morning a neighbor’s dog wakes me with its barking.
I hear some kind of chittering and think it might be raccoons having a disagreement.
I slip outside into the cool darkness.
Bird sections begin their warm-up.
I wonder what mornings will be like where we’re going.
Probably not like this. Or maybe just different, but still good.

I open Jeanne Murray Walker’s Helping the Morning. In her poem, “Centering,” I linger over these words:

“. . .  Oh, after a while it feels inevitable,
the long blue pull of the mind
that keeps finding more in less
until the will bends and circles
home to stillness that feels final, true.”

Generations on FDellFarms

Six generations. There were seven counting my nephew and son who aren’t pictured.
John established the farm in 1854 and for some reason returned home to New York to be buried.
Someday I’ll re-do this with a photo of my adult husband and maybe add my son.

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Filed Under: Blog, poetry, stories

Comments

  1. Simply Darlene says

    June 1, 2016 at 9:44 am

    Look at this – you came heavy to the page, and unpacked such beauty.

    • Sandra Heska King says

      June 3, 2016 at 12:10 pm

      I did it. I wrote something. 😉

  2. Martha Orlando says

    June 1, 2016 at 11:30 am

    Home is anywhere your heart is . . .
    Thank you for sharing this reflection, Sandy. I do pray your move will be one that brings you many blessings.

    • Sandra Heska King says

      June 3, 2016 at 12:11 pm

      Thanks so much, Martha. I’m pretty sure this will be the hardest transition ever. And I’m so grateful for your friendship and prayers.

  3. Laurie Klein says

    June 2, 2016 at 7:54 pm

    ‘I stop . . . line up the best view in my lens and bring it into focus.’ Not just the wild phlox thriving by water, either but an outlook on the history of a family and a place and an ever-unfolding life.

    • Sandra Heska King says

      June 3, 2016 at 12:12 pm

      Oh, Laurie. I almost wrote something to that effect, but then I deleted it. And you said it. And much more beautifully. Thanks for coming by and reminding me that life is still unfolding. And for giving me a name for these flowers. 🙂

      • Laurie Klein says

        June 4, 2016 at 2:53 pm

        It was there between the lines, Sandra. 🙂 Those flowers grow down by our wildly scummy pond. I adore their lush, vibrant color. I hope I’m calling them by the right name, they look like my domesticated version.

        Those lines by JMW are stunners. Lines I want to live today. And every day. Thank you.

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I’m Sandra, a camera-toting, recovering doer who’s learning to be. still. Read more…

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“Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to “Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood. . . Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment and bow their heads.” ~ Mary Oliver in “Mysteries, Yes”
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No way could anyone ever convince me that this world in all its beauty and creativity and mysteries is here by accident.
Food truck night with a newcomer—@crepstick. So Food truck night with a newcomer—@crepstick. So yummy! I hope they come back.  But maybe not too often or I’ll have to do double time on the exercise.
“Embrace this day knowing and showing the world “Embrace this day knowing and showing the world that your God is more than enough for you.”
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@tamiheim @tonibirdsong 
In @stickyJesus: How to Live Out Your Faith Online
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the str My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion.” Psalm 73:26 (ESV)
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I’d almost forgotten what quiet mornings on the patio were like. (Quiet except for the birds and the sound of the neighbor’s AC.)
So yesterday I saw my cardiologist. It was the fir So yesterday I saw my cardiologist. It was the first time he wanted to see me in 6 months instead of a year. He said my aortic stenosis had gotten worse. Like on the cusp of moderate to severe. 😬

So the first thing he asks me is, "How's you daughter?" Wait. Isn't this supposed to be about ME?

Then he asks if I've had any symptoms. "Well, I don't know. Maybe. I felt a little dizzy out of the blue a couple times. And felt like I couldn't catch my breath. I wouldn't have paid any attention if I didn't know I was supposed to be watching for symptoms. I DID walk all over Israel and up a bunch of steep hills, even all the way up to the Golan Heights--against the wind--without anything but normal fatigue.

He laughs. "I created a monster." Ummm, yeah.

"Have you been exercising?" 

"Well, yeah. We walk a couple miles a day. I'm back on my Nordictrack Strider." I didn't tell him I'd been lifting some light weights and some very heavy boxes and other items during this renovation, though I was told in December not to.

So he listens to the beating of my heart. Then he says, "Well, I don't think the valve is ripe yet. I don't expect you to have symptoms for three or four years. You don't need to come back for a year."

Wait! So you ask if I have symptoms. But you don't expect symptoms--yet. And when I do have symptoms, someone is gonna do something. And then I'll be older and maybe weaker. Or what if I have some sudden and silent symptom and boom! And now I have to worry about that. 

(In other news, my oldest grand texts me the other day, and our conversation runs like this...
Last weekend we were in northern Michigan. And the Last weekend we were in northern Michigan. And there were lilacs. They even shook their heads over tornado-induced devastation. Look for the beauty and sweet scents in the midst of the mess. I miss the lilacs.
Yesterday’s morning view. We haven’t seen the Yesterday’s morning view. We haven’t seen the sun all day today.
When the folks in my hometown of Gaylord, Michigan When the folks in my hometown of Gaylord, Michigan ate their breakfast Friday morning, they had no idea what terror and devastation they'd face before dinner. Everyone has a story. You've probably seen pictures.

If not, take a peek at @mlivenews .

My great-nephew, not quite 12, had just gotten home from school when the EF-3 came down the street and left its mark on every home. My niece frantically tried to find her way from work through debris and blocked roads. My sister was 30 miles away visiting my dad in rehab. I don't want to know how fast my brother-in-law drove. 

The house and yard took a hit, worse than some, not as bad as others. A mobile home park was demolished--two deaths there. I heard one person is still missing. So many injured. So much awful. But the town is coming together for each other. Pray for them.

We plan to fly up Thursday--already planned to celebrate my dad's 95th birthday. 

Also, if anyone feels led to help, the Otsego Community Foundation and Otsego County United Way are accepting donations. Note “Tornado Relief.” Beware of any other fundraising requests.
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And now… “From the rising of the sun to the pl And now… “From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the Lord is to be praised.”
The world’s a mess, but His mercies are new. The world’s a mess, but His mercies are new.
When we were in Israel last month, we visited @yad When we were in Israel last month, we visited @yadvashem - the World Holocaust Center in Jerusalem. There wasn't enough time to spend nearly enough time. 

The Valley of the Communities was very moving. It's a labyrinth of stone from which there seems no way out. Our guide said It gives an idea of the endlessness of the horror. His parents emigrated from Vilna (the Jerusalem of Lithuania), before the Holocaust. In 1935, thirteen of his family members still remained there. By 1945 only one--an uncle--had survived. He wrote a book about them from a bundle of old letters. "One story out of millions."

"This memorial commemorates the Jewish communities destroyed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, and the few which suffered but survived in the shadow of the Holocaust."
#Israel2022 #HolocaustRemembranceDay
“From my favorite spot on the floor, I look up a “From my favorite spot on the floor, I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, ” Anne Frank wrote in the Diary of a Young Girl. Watching the tree change through the seasons her family spent in hiding in an attic gave her hope. The Holocaust Memorial Center is one of only eleven sites in the United States to receive a sapling from that tree. I stand at “her” window and imagine hanging hope on a tree.

"It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.” ~ Primo Levi

From a post I wrote for @tspoetry after a visit to the @holocaustcenter.

https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/2016/07/27/regional-tour-holocaust-memorial-center-farmington-hills-michigan/
Stunning tree I parked near at Bible study yesterd Stunning tree I parked near at Bible study yesterday. I was in a rush and failed to snap the whole tree. I need to run back before the flowers fall. I think it’s a jacaranda? I want one.
Speaking of birds... bluejay in my backyard this a Speaking of birds... bluejay in my backyard this afternoon. I thought he was hurt, but I think he was just trying to cool off. (Maybe it's a young one.... unless it's the light?)
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“Now in the place where he was crucified there w “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.” ~ John 19:41

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Many wonder if this tomb, which lies just a few yards west of Golgotha could be the place where Jesus lay and rose. I wish we could have lingered longer here in this garden and in the tomb itself. It was easier for me to imagine the events of that weekend happening here than in the heavily incensed, decorated, dark and crowded Church of the Holy Sepulchre… though my hairdresser said her old boyfriend “got chills”’when he entered that tomb. We did not go inside that one because the line was way too long. 

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HAPPY EASTER!
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Garden of Gethsemane and Church of the Nations

#Israel2022
A "blue preacher" right outside my door, nearly as A "blue preacher" right outside my door, nearly as tall as I am. I wonder what he's wondering. Is he finding the answer blowing in the wind?

"Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness." ~ Mary Oliver in "Why I Wake Early"
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