We're coming close to the first anniversary of Dad's death. I've been cleaning my desk and touching a surprising number of things that were his. Even in cyberspace — I discovered some online storage where I had stuck a large amount of material from the hard drive of his computer. It seemed funny yesterday to read the titles of Dad's computer files. They were so obviously his — files about soups, law, religion, and poems.
Mom's been cleaning out some of Dad's stuff from their condo in Norwalk lately. And she's been traveling, too.
In Minneapolis on September 14, 2010, she met with one of Dad's longtime friends in the Unitarian Universalist movement, the Rev. Rob Eller-Isaascs, co-minister of Unity Church - Unitarian in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She reported, "Rob Eller-Isaacs sat me down in his office on Tuesday evening and read aloud this poem, which he said reminded him of Jerry."
The poem is "The Long Boat," by Stanley Kunitz.
When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with the family ghosts
In the slop of his cradle,
buffered by the storm,
endlessly drifting.
Peace! Peace!
To be rocked by the Infinite!
As if it didn’t matter
which way was home;
as if he didn’t know
he loved the earth so much
he wanted to stay forever.
