This is my favourite piece of yours yet, Jason. Tremendous poem and heart-achingly beautiful essay underneath. Sorry for your loss. You have done your parents and father-in-law credit with this post.
I love this haiku, Jason. Thank you for sharing it with us as well as sharing with us about your grief.
I have recently read a book, https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54883035, Ladder to the Light, which is by an Episcopal bishop who is also an elder of the Choctaw nation, and it startled me to read your post and realize that your description of the traditions of honoring elders in your former faith and that you saw in Taiwan has a lot of similarity to what he describes about kinship traditions extending to ancestors in the Choctaw religion.
This is a beautiful piece and means a lot to me. The drawings themselves remind me of some Whitman passages, and I mean that as high compliment. I've been thinking about this issue a lot lately (2 of my good friends recently passed away pretty young--early 50's). Anyway, this is really thoughtful and got my mind going.
Just lovely, really. Good luck the next few days!
This is my favourite piece of yours yet, Jason. Tremendous poem and heart-achingly beautiful essay underneath. Sorry for your loss. You have done your parents and father-in-law credit with this post.
I love this haiku, Jason. Thank you for sharing it with us as well as sharing with us about your grief.
I have recently read a book, https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54883035, Ladder to the Light, which is by an Episcopal bishop who is also an elder of the Choctaw nation, and it startled me to read your post and realize that your description of the traditions of honoring elders in your former faith and that you saw in Taiwan has a lot of similarity to what he describes about kinship traditions extending to ancestors in the Choctaw religion.
You do your ancestors well; you truly live.
This is a beautiful piece and means a lot to me. The drawings themselves remind me of some Whitman passages, and I mean that as high compliment. I've been thinking about this issue a lot lately (2 of my good friends recently passed away pretty young--early 50's). Anyway, this is really thoughtful and got my mind going.