Alison Hodgson

Expert on the etiquette of perilous times.

June 22, 2013

by 1 Comment

Today was the tenth anniversary of my father’s death and in some ways I can’t believe it’s been that long. In others, I can’t believe I ever had him.

We measure his death by Eden’s life. She was five months old when my dad died. She rolled over for the very first time the day of his funeral. I remember so many frantic drives across the state when he was near death, with only Eden in her little car seat behind me.

I wish I still had my dad, but even more I wish my children had a grandfather here on earth.

Deep Thoughts with Cakie H.

by 3 Comments

Eden turned 7 last Monday. That morning I asked her how it felt.

“I don’t feel different yet,” she said, “it takes a while to get used to.”

Yesterday we were driving when she said out of the blue, “Mom, I can’t believe the world never stops.”

I asked her what she meant.

“Let’s say you’re dead but there’s still things happening when you’re not alive. Somebody’s probably still playing, somebody’s still running and that’s never ever going to stop.”

I was quiet.

“It’s just something strange I think about.”

“It’s a deep thought.” I said.

“It’s a good thing to think about.” She said.

by 3 Comments

I had too much to say this week and so I didn’t say anything.

Last Sunday was Father’s Day and Monday was the sixth anniversary of my father’s death. The week before Paul and I attended the funeral of a nineteen year old boy from church who was killed in a car accident. It was the most beautiful and holy funeral I have ever attended and I have been to many in my relatively short life.

I recently picked up a book of essays called The Undertaking – Life Studies From a Dismal Trade by Thomas Lynch, an undertaker and poet who lives in Milford, Michigan. He is such a good writer and writes so wisely and well about death, the dead and those who survive them. This book would have been good company any time, but especially this week.

“In even the best of caskets, it never all fits-all that we’d like to bury in them: the hurt and forgiveness, the anger and pain, the praise and thanksgiving, the emptiness and exaltations, the untidy feelings when someone dies. So I conduct this business carefully…”
(from the essay Jessica, the Hound and the Casket Trade, page 191)

http://alisonhodgson.com/2009/06/284/

9/27/08

by 3 Comments

Had he lived, today would have been my father’s seventieth birthday.  Tomorrow my mother will be 68. When Dad was alive none of us kids could keep their birthdays straight.  Year after year Torey and I would (separately) call Mom and wish her a happy birthday, sometimes singing it to her in a stupid voice.  When we had finished, she would say laughing, “Oh Honey, thank you, but today is your dad’s birthday.”  Then we would call Dad.  Somehow we always forgot.  

Dad went into the hospital on April 2 and finally died on June 22.  Beside the door of his various rooms was posted his information: Wolfe, Donald R. DOB: 9/27/58.
September 27th.  I can’t tell you how many times I read that typed sheet.  In those days upon days that numbered his last on earth, I finally learned the date of his birth.  When it rolled around just three months after his death, I knew it was coming; I was marking it.  This irony was just another drop in the bitterness that was then my cup.  
We kids had never really made a big deal about our parents’ birthdays, following their lead.  We called, sometimes sent cards, occasionally bought a present and that was enough, but the first birthdays after his death, the burden of my mother’s aloneness fell heavily on me.  The 27th dawned and I called my mother and wished her a happy birthday. “Today is your dad’s birthday,” she said gently.  I told that I knew and then we both began to cry.   I have called her on the 27th and done something for her on her own birthday ever since.
This evening I realized that I forgot to call her, that I forgot today was his birthday at all. 
R.I.P. – Rest In Peace is often written as a fitting closing to a tribute or memory of one who is dead, but I don’t find it necessary.  I know he is at peace and I am glad to realize that I am too.

For Andy and Sherry

by 1 Comment

On the day of his mother’s burial.

All mankind is of one Author, and is one volume; when one Man dies, one Chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every Chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation; and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that Library where every book shall lie open to one another.

John Donne

from XVII. Meditation