Abandonment and What Was

Abandonment and What Was

Ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries. When we face a problem, we may not know its solution, but we have insight, an inkling of what we are looking for. When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare in wonder and bewilderment, not knowing what an explanation would even look like.

                                                                                                                                -Noam Chomsky

Monday 5:30 pm.

Trying to identify this dead tree is like trying to give John Doe a more personable name at the Morgue. No shoots of life (leaves) and no name tag. But who am I kidding? I couldn't identify a tree for the life of me (with exception to a decorated Christmas tree).

But here I go. Out of all the slightly hopeful-of-life-in-the-Spring trees, my eyes beeline to the dead one.

Abandonment. Let my obsessions be revealed (like those persistent moles of the Whack-A-Mole variety-- I gotta acknowledge them, or they just keep coming back.)

So below this dead tree (abandonment of life) is an abandoned red car (abandonment of human investment) and behind me is the “Yellow House” (*Garden View manor) with its grounds that are anything but abandoned. But it’s a Red Herring. See, inside its manicured yellow walls walk those whose mind or soul has abandoned their body (or on the verge of abandoning their body-- permanently or temporarily).

And as much as “they” remain a “they,” I can’t help but feel a deep connection to them... as in the whole idea ain’t that unfamiliar to me. The woman who lives below me once said, “Siobhan, the only difference between this house (our apartment building) and that house (the Yellow House) is that we pay for our food.” I laughed a laugh that was polite, but had you been able to read my mind, you could’ve felt my acceptance of her theory.

It’s now 6:00 pm as I type this. Damyon has until 10 pm to receive calls. I just tried calling him, but after a faint voice says “Hello?” he/she hangs up.

Damyon, my 16 year old nephew, is locked down in a psych ward.

I just tried the number again, and it’s busy. I suspect whoever answered and hung up before, didn't want the line clogged up. I can dig that. If I had talked to him, I would've told him I was writing about him in my “nature blog.” He would've laughed and said “what's up” to you.

(((“What's up?” from my nephew Damyon.)))

My uncle died in a psych ward. When his name is invoked at family gatherings, there’ll be head shaking and a ho-hum exhale, “it all started with that spider bite.”

Last year, when taking another family member to a ward, a patient rolled up behind me bumping me with his wheel chair. “Excuse me,” said two gauzed-up and bloody wrists. When I looked into his face he was smiling.

I am trying to connect three rivers here: abandonment, mental illness, and a nature blog, all tentacles of capital N Nature. 

I'm thinking about abandoned buildings, buildings that house abandoned souls and the eerie nostalgia abandonment musters, as in Ted Kooser’s poem:

Abandoned Farmhouse

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes

on a pile of broken dishes by the house;

a tall man too, says the length of the bed

in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,

says the Bible with a broken back

on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;

but not a man for farming, say the fields

cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall

papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves

covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,

says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.

Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves

and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.

And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.

It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

Something went wrong, says the empty house

in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields

say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars

in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.

And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard

like branches after a storm--a rubber cow,

a rusty tractor with a broken plow,

a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.

This was the first poem I read by Kooser, you can probably guess I was an instant convert. Why are we so drawn to abandonment? 

I think abandonment gives us (me) an honest expectation of life. We abandon, or everything must come to abandonment (life, this MFA program, you name it). What's more, abandonment still offers strings to the "what was." So the memory of a loved one, the neighborhood that once was, the way a grandparent's eyes gloss over when they hear an old tune. Abandonment feels like an honest way in which to navigate the world, life. In Buddhism, its called impermanence, these concepts are similar.

Today the snow offers me a couple of abandoned objects beyond the tree and car:

 A crushed can of ginger ale.

            He was lied to, said the crushed can of ginger ale.

And box of Robotussin.

            She was ready for the Spring, said the open box of Robotussin.

And finally, if looking at myself from a bird’s eye view:

                She was connected, said the words filtered through her notebook.

                

 *Riding up the driveway to Garden View Manor (formerly Jane Holmes), you can sense 

the historical significance of the building and the grounds to the many people who 

worked or lived there and the neighborhood in general. This significance has been and 

continues to be expressed by residents of Wilkinsburg through thoughtful recollections 

of an organization as a pillar of the community and as a dedicated neighbor.

Dating back to 1869, Jane Holmes provided short-term and long-term assisted living in 

various forms. At different times throughout its history, the home offered a safe haven 

for expectant mothers, and personal care and assistance with daily living for seniors. 

Today, in keeping with the more than a century-old tradition of care, Garden View 

Manor continues to offer adults residential personal care. 

Mercy Behavioral Health is especially proud of the fact that one of the reasons we were selected to obtain the facility was because our mission paralleled that of the former Jane Holmes.

Mercy Behavioral Health (MBH), part of the Pittsburgh Mercy Health System, provides 

community-based mental health, mental retardation/developmental disability, and drug/

alcohol prevention and treatment services through Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Taken from: Wilkinsburg Sun