Suzanne’s Song
(celebration given by Doug Kreitzberg at Suzanne’s Memorial Service, Westtown Meeting House, January 11, 2020)
Out through the screen door at 816 Mather
Over the Spring dew kissing the lawn
Down past the flower beds, the peonies, the daffodils
Over the forbidden train tracks and the fields beyond
The fields you called Arcadia, your hundred acre wood, unspoiled, harmonious
Where you and your fellow explorers, Nancy Patterson, Margaret Roy, Debbie Kirkland and Susan Fisher charted the wilderness, built forts in the brier, layed transit and sextant to map the kingbird in the hickory, map the rich tobacco leaves hung in the barns, map the sweet tar and pitch of the railroad trestles, map the purple skein from your father's pipe, mother's green bean and cream of mushroom casserole, the Sunday car drives, ice-cream in Enfield, the shadows rising across the bedroom ceiling, the sound of laughter, Sinatra and ice cubes from a Friday night bridge party down the hall, sibling rivalry, schoolyard stress, the deliberate footfalls before the doorway reprimand, a chicken coop inexplicably rolled down the street in a snowstorm -- mapping all joys, sorrows and ordinary that we call the real with the path that led to the secret garden of your imagination.
Because back then you had the key, the key to the garden between the inner and outer worlds that you hung around your heart and through which you passed effortlessly. ‘Olly Olly Oxen Free!’ cried the robin redbreast, and you responded by burrowing your hands in the rich soils of each world, planting ivy, delphinium, columbine, campanula in one, dancing among the ferns and the foxgloves in the other, breathing in the scent of the late roses, resting moon-eyed beneath the shimmering trees.
And in the summer light, among the flowering daisies, you grew, and the world grew within you.
Beatles over Stones, Paul over John, the stirrings watching the boys play soccer, the trembling between the sheets before first light on 86th Street, the musty smell of goats brought by passengers on the airline charters to the Hajj you flew from Lagos, the musty smell of the drunk physicians you flew from Birmingham to Europe, summers on your beloved Cape Cod (your happy place), blue noodles, sliding down the chute at Shannon, bliss before the Pieta in Rome, summer love blooming among the dahlias and hydrangeas.
But in harsh August, with cicadas rising and falling in sweltering waves, the shadows and spirit of your secret garden narrowed, leaving indentured expectation, the stifling anticipation of approval, the tumble dried out love of a first marriage, paychecks running out before the bills did. Rejection, submission, negation wilting the bloom of your imagination, sweat rusting the key to your garden.
Yet you bore the weight of all that and tucked the garden key safely in the hearts of your children by creating new worlds which rippled and fanned between the front seat and the car seat on the way to school, to Starbucks, to the gas station, to the store. You gave the key first to Erin, all scrunchie, leggings and fire, for whom you always thought you never did enough and hoped that she would feel safe enough to be open to the wonder of the fruits and flowers of her own garden. Then to John, all curious and compassion and earth, the child you never thought you'd have, whom you hoped would plant the garden of his own dreams. And to Maddie, dancer of air, the garden drifting in her like a soft breeze, whom you hoped would one day see her own poise, presence and possibilities through the affirmation of your gentle eyes. You cared for, tended and nourished each, grafting grace onto responsibility, serenity onto passion, humility onto confidence.
As September cooled and the sunflowers bent their heads towards the lobelia and stubborn ageratum, you began to rediscover the contours and magic of your secret garden. First, you pruned back the bitter grapes which had numbed you from the weight you carried for years, a weight, which, you discovered in the rooms, was yours to simply let go. Then, in fellowship with your forum, your new band of explorers, warrior women all, you tended to the borders of your garden, weeded out demands and shame, planted authenticity and self-compassion, created paths for you alone to walk.
And in the Hill Country of Texas, with a Nikon and a blue bonnet, you rediscovered your creative passion. Where others focused on landscapes and large terrain, you focused on a flower petal; where others wanted splash and color, you went to black & white; where others wanted the eyes, you saw the hands; where others saw old and run down, you saw the sacred in line and curve, light and shadow. You worked hard at your craft and perhaps learned the most important lesson from Carlan your last mentor; that the ability to see the world comes from the ability to see within. Your ultimate creative gift was to see within you so clearly, patiently and lovingly that we could see the metta and magic of the ordinary through your lens as well.
Then first frost. The mottled sycamore solid against the silver lawn. Bittersweet exploding with birds. Yellow nestled in the green of the variegated false cypress. And among the winter holly, grew new, strange winter plants: ureothelial carcinoma, cisplatin, gemcitabine, keytruda, enfortumab. An invasive disease. Subtle poisons. Yet, as the weeds choked your body and it began to break down, you did not break down. In fact, the disease enabled your remarkable spirit to shine brighter as if it could no longer be contained, but yearned to be part of and flow through everything and everyone.
And I felt it. And you felt it, too. In the quiet, sage smudged moments of morning, in the cafes for Saturday breakfast, shopping for nesting dolls and christmas lights, we discovered that what is left, after everything - even after hope, is nothing but pure love. That when we settle into a space with no future, when we stop quibbling about or yearning for a past, when the only thing that exists is the present and we embrace the plenitude of that moment, our hearts open naturally. And love is there. For free.
A November afternoon. Cape Air. Boston to Provincetown. Your last visit. You begin to cry as we rise in the golden light. Out your window, over the wing, curls the Cape.
“It’s a miracle,” you whisper, “the Cape never should be here. The storms, year after year, the sea, the currents. It just should not be here. A miracle.”
And I begin to cry. “You are the miracle,” I say to myself. This moment, the radiance of your spirit, the joy of being next to you, the golden light, your light in our children’s eyes, the light through the trees on to the secret gardens of your imagination. The life we created together and the individual passions we encouraged and supported each other to develop, all are miracles. And I bury my head in your shoulder. The engines hum. The pilot sets the flaps. We begin to descend.
"Hush," you say.
We are still in the golden light, and you've taken off your shoes, sand between your toes, the sun casting long shadows from the lifeguard station at Race Point, across the beach grass and dunes towards the water. There is the shadow of one figure on the beach now, and I see you in the surf and the breakers beyond.
"Hush."
And you rise, up over the sandspit, over Pilgrim monument, above and among the fishing boats at MacMillan's wharf, through their nets, gills, pounds and weirs, past the Crown and Anchor where the drag queen fixes her wig before husking the evening's show. Past the Lobster Pot and beach cottages on 6A.
"Hush."
Your eyes are the kettle ponds of Truro and Wellfleet, your hair, cordgrass and cat tails, the curves of your body, the shoreline from Sunken Meadow to First Encounter, your breath the soft rustle through the bayberry. Your skin, the flats at low tide, your fingers, the eddies and inlets feeding Salt Pond Bay.
"Hush."
You are now the secret garden, your magic fills the air, flowing through it all. The quohogs and razor clams buried near the eelgrass and sea lettuce, the toddler fingering a hermit crab in the tide pool, the young rose hips and fiddleheads in early Spring, the rusted leaves of the scrub oak in late Fall, the college boys with their lies and mudslides at the Beachcomber, the Brahmins and New Yorkers stacked like herring at the Chatham Bars, the shortstop making his first 6-3 as an Orleans Cardinal, the seals off Monomoy, the fireworks off Yarmouth, then Dennis, then Brewster, killdeer and plover hopscotching on Coast Guard beach, the broken windows and lost memories of the Dean's house on Tomahawk, the new Harlan Coban at the Yellow Umbrella, the Cape Codder at the Superette, the fist pump at mini-golf, the little girl dripping ice cream at Ben and Jerry's, popcorn and double feature at the Wellfleet drive-in, a cat boat setting sail from Ryder Cove, fried clams at Arnolds, black flies at Rock Harbor, morning coffee at low tide, a burst of pink and purple moments after sunset, a falling star across a wine dark sky.
"Hush."
And you. Toes in the sand, facing the sun.
"Hush."
Eyes closed. The tide slowly going out.
Nothing but warmth, sea foam.
"Hush."
A gentle breeze. Gentle waves, calling.
“Sssh”
Calling you home.
"Sssh".
"Sssh".
“Sssh.”
Doug Kreitzberg
West Chester, 2020