Note from Tammy-the-editor: My dad has written some beautiful poetry and I hope you enjoy it as I have. I liked the poem about "The Past," and so decided that was a good one to start with and also a nice explanation of the way his life is at present and why he is thinking about the past and writing poetry about it.
The Past
The past is always with me,
The Past
The past is always with me,
It cannot let me go.
Tell me why this is so,
While the present fades away.
A novel once I read of a dream
So strange it was.
Of a man who was two
And yet was only one.
One watched the other silently.
How could it be, he mused?
If I am here behind this screen,
How can I be over there?
Which one of me is watching?
And which one being watched?
Which one is me?
They both certainly can’t be.
A strange dream I had one night,
It will not let me go.
The doctor said in a voice so low,
Two hearts you have, my boy.
Two hearts, I’ve wondered since,
Can two hearts beat as one?
Or rather, if different they must be,
Which one is really me?
The sands of time are running low,
Two of me there are.
One is buried in the past,
One lives in the world of reality.
One a bus knows day by day,
One lives in letters of many years ago.
Like a patchwork quilt
They both make up reality.
Which one is really me?
By her I sit an hour or two each day.
To her I wrote the letters
That I read just yesterday.
With her I am, but my thoughts
Are of long ago; of moments happy and sad,
We shared when love was new.
And so life goes on,
Her life so limited now,
The past he cherishes and relives
For her is gone forever.
So the question remains,
As through life I walk.
Is it in the past I live
Or in the present drab?
Which one is really me?
Ricardo Palma, renowned Peruvian writer, decided to bury his life in the past when his good friend and president of Peru was assassinated. From that decision was born the motivation to write his “tradiciones,” his attempt to re-create the past of his native country.
My situation is not as drastic as his but for several reasons I have been living more in the past than in the present. I think it all started at Christmas time 2009, when I was listening to the Tabernacle Choir and music by the Celtic Women. In that very enjoyable atmosphere, wonderful except for one fact, I was alone. And I began to think that as my time on earth was getting shorter, that my grandchildren and grandchildren and even my children would know very little about me when I would be called home. Yes, there are aspects of my life I’ve written about but an organized life history was not a reality. Who would want to read all of that?
So I decided to write some episodes of my life that I call “Snapshots,” that would give an idea of what my life has been like. To those I added excerpts from a report my Mother wrote about me. Bless her heart, Tammy produced a booklet of those “Snapshots.” She also produced a CD of me reading the “Snapshots.” I thought it would be important for my posterity to hear my voice.
In the meantime I had listened to a CD of an interview of my Mother with my nephew Mike Eckersley. It was a treasure because not only did my mother tell about her early life in that interview, but I could hear her voice! I’m not sure about the sequence of these events that follow, but that CD motivated me to want to get all my siblings together and record the memories we could share. I felt this was really important because our ages, 90’s and 80’s, meant that opportunities for all of us to get together at one time would be getting very limited. So we did get together in Ogden in November of 2010 and we had a wonderful time.
We brought materials to the gathering that might help us to write the life history of Dad and Mom. That was a glorious occasion and was the last time we were all together as my oldest brother Bud passed away just two months ago. The sands of time are running out for all of us.
Physically our bodies showed a lot of wear and tear but our minds were still functioning well, although there are some short-term memory problems.
In the meantime Tammy had come across the section of Avon’s missionary journal which detailed how we met in Denver and how our “courtship” developed there. Of course those pages took me back to a time of long ago, as portrayed by Avon. Tammy scanned those pages and printed a book of those experiences. What a sweetheart Tammy is! [Note from Tammy--THANKS DAD!]
Avon's original missionary scrapbook and the scanned version
On the back burner is the history of “Avonne’s Story Shoppe.”
I’m still gathering what the family remembers of that time in our lives along with pictures and articles related to the “Shoppe.” This brings back another trip into the past.
To complete what was important in my life history I began to write up my mission experiences using my journal as the primary source. I thought it strange that my journal stopped when I was transferred to Laredo. A whole year of my mission was missing! Tammy to the rescue! In the boxes stored by her were the letters I wrote to Avon for two years, including my stay in the Lower Valley and Laredo. So evidently I stopped writing in my journal while I was in Laredo because I was telling Avon what I was doing there. Journal entries would have been redundant. So now I could finish my report of my mission. But then something else hit me! Here were letters to Avon that described in some detail what was going on between us, a friendship that became much deeper. So I selected from those letters the portions that portray that relationship and called it "Love by Mail," and will make it available to anyone who wants to read it. Certainly when I read those letters I am immersed in the past.
How sad it is that Avon’s letters to me have been lost. So the point of view is one-sided by necessity although many times her feelings are reflected in the letters I wrote to her.
So with all the projects in which I am engaged, it is easy to see that the present sort of fades away. Yes, I do indexing and go to the Temple and go to Church and spend some time with Tina, Jerry, Tammy, Ladd and the rest of our family. They are wonderful. They do things for me all the time and want me to be happy. I love them and appreciate them, but for more than 60 years my life has been entwined with Avon’s.
The past comes alive when I go back to the times when her mind was alert and her body strong. Even when I sit with her and hold her hand my thoughts are of the past we shared, that to her are now emptiness. Lately I have been pulling out Mexican songs I used to sing. Some of them I have forgotten so I have found them on the Internet. So now when I visit Avon I sing to her the Mexican songs we used to sing together. They bring back memories of the mission, when I learned them and of a happier past with Avon. Here also the past creeps in and displaces the present.
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