Farewell, Mary Oliver
(September 10, 1935 - January 17, 2019)
Exit.
On the day she left the earth, storms raged in southern California.
One of the righteous 36 was returned to home; and when one goes, a piece of each of the others follows.
A disturbance in nature was felt even before the news of her passing was delivered.
Enter.
I don’t remember how I came to know Mary Oliver or how long she had felt like family, only that her words were held carefully in our home.
The corner of our family bed is where her poems were most often found. Various pages decorated with brightly colored tabs marking favorite passages without harming the book.
Remember.
Snapshots, of holding my child as we read and discussed Mary’s lines, move now like a flip book in my mind.
My daughter, when just past 10 years of age, had an affinity for the poem, “Mysteries, Yes.”
She read it on YouTube with the hope of introducing it to other homeschoolers.
Impassioned with confidence, she lifted her voice to say,
“Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
‘Look!’ And laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.”
A cheerful recognition came across my child’s face as she recited with pride,
“Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood.”
Practice.
It was, in part, the poem “The Uses of Sorrow” that helped me heal from a betrayal and come to forgive.
“Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift”
I came to know, what others before me have taught, that forgiveness is when we stop wishing things could have been different but instead find the value in the experience, and even offer gratitude for it, no matter how painful.
Teacher.
Ms. Oliver was an encouraging voice on my path as a writer. After I wrote “Charitable Praise” and worried that it would be misunderstood as propaganda for flattery, I sat in my reading spot to pray and meditate and randomly opened Mary Oliver’s Devotions to page 77. The words caressed my concern with tones of soothing validation,
“It’s praising.
It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.”
I felt heard in the silence, understood in the invisible void that connects us all as one.
Friendship.
In her poem, “When I am among the trees,” she quotes the trees unto herself, though it feels like personal encouragement.
“and you too have come into the world to do this,
to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”
Some of my most cherished friendships have been with writers and poets I have never met nor known, except through their insightful words of wisdom, beauty, and truth.
Farewell.
I will miss Mary Oliver. My daughter will miss Mary Oliver. I know with sureness that the world of nature will miss being reflected in the words of Mary Oliver.
In her poem, “When Death Comes,” she wrote,
“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”
As her poetry reveals, thus she was,
both the bride and the bridegroom,
to nature, to life, to wonder.
Amen.
If you enjoyed this piece, please check out my article, Time at Substack.
Sage Justice, author of “Sage Words FREEDOM Book One.” If you’d like to read more pieces like this, please check out the book on Amazon, monthly articles at SageJustice.Substack.com, videos on YouTube (Sage Words: Almost Everything You Need to Know), inspiration on IG @SageWords2027, website and the podcast: Sage Words (Apple & Spotify). A like and follow on the Sage Justice, author page, on facebook is greatly appreciated. Thank you.