The Parting, Muriel Fraser
In the past few weeks, we’ve seen the passing of a number of well-known people. Dolly Parton, Gloria Steinem, Robyn Morgan, Tim Curry, and Wendell Berry. Some names are instantly recognizable. Others may be new to us, depending on what our life has been like and what we have been interested in.
Some of these passings feel universal, reaching people around the world. Social media is flooded with clips from interviews and speaking of Dolly’s The Imagination Library, Gloria’s impact as a feminist activist, and Wendell Berry’s poetry.
How are we affected by these people, their lives and deaths? Our nervous system keeps track of everything that happens in our life and around us. Some of these feel like a gut punch. For people who die after a long full life, we have a different response. It’s always helpful to take a few breaths and relax our body as we process.
People we have never met can still change us. I never met Gloria Steinem or Robyn Morgan, but their work shaped how I understood sexism and patriarchy when I was a young and passionate activist. Validation is powerful. We are not the only ones seeing clearly. We are not the only ones fighting for social justice.
Different cultures have their own ways of acknowledging a death. May their life be a blessing. May she rest in power. Each phrase points to the impact a person had while they were here. Some people change the world through their life and courage and when they pass, we have a collective commemoration, these days largely through social media.
My grandmother, Muriel Fraser, wrote a poem in 1943 when my father left for World War II at seventeen. He served in the Navy as a Morse code operator. Before he left, she affirmed that some will not make it home. Some will act as if they are not coming home. Don't do anything while you're away that you can't live with. Keep your integrity.
She invited him to remember his own humanity, and in doing that, to remember the humanity of everyone around him. This is her poem.
The Parting
Cruel hands clutching my heart -
Must we part, My son and I
He to go to a foreign land
Perhaps to die, and I -
I shall return to my native heath
Nursing my grief,
Caring naught of Heaven above
Or earth beneath,
Only wishing that it were true
That I were the soldier in place of you -
You, whom I taught
Never to point a gun,
even in fun, At anyone.
What do you know of war and its gore,
How can you know what you're fighting for,
When the only lore that you've been taught
God wot! Is the golden rule
Taught in school
Muriel Fraser
Shaunavon, Saskatchewan Canada (my paternal grandmother)
Eighty some years later, the poem still resonates. We live in a different world, but so many people are still parting and living under the shadow of real danger. We see it constantly now, in the lives of people we know personally, and in the wider world.
We have so much in common as human beings. We all want safety. Our nervous systems respond strongly when we feel uncertain or afraid. We all know what it feels like to be understood, to have someone at our back, and we respond when we feel that from someone else.
An open heart depends on a regulated nervous system. When we are in a survival response, we do not have the capacity for warmth or connection. When we soften, that capacity returns, and we can feel our connection to each other and to the people whose work and lives have given us so much, whether that is Dolly Parton's Imagination Library or the decades of work that feminists and social justice advocates have put into the world.
Do something every day to regulate your nervous system. We need strength, resilience, and community in this world of fear and uncertainty. We all have influence on each other, whether we are known on a world stage or writing poetry in a small town in Saskatchewan. We are human. We touch each other's hearts.
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