Today, a poem instead of a painting – Oh, and a postcard too.

PostSecret  is all about fathers today and is so worth a visit …

I was reading an article in “YOU” magazine (which is a supplement that comes with the Sunday Mail) this morning – written by Marina Lewycka. It is beautifully written and very moving. She writes about her father’s tragic decline with severe Alzheimer’s – and given today is “Father’s Day” in the UK, this article is particularly poignant.

I’m not going to quote her article other than to say, that she mentions that recently, on a visit to see her father, at a stage when his illness is rapidly progressing, he mentioned a poem by Baudelaire about an Albatross. It troubled him greatly that he couldn’t recall the words. However, he clearly understood the meaning of the poem and I suspect likened it to his own condition.

When Marina got home she looked this poem up and suddenly realised why her father had been trying to remember it. She said: “When I read the Baudelaire poem, I understood something about him (her father), and my heart aches for him – the poet, the stumbling bird, the prince of the clouds, my dad.”

When you read the poem below you will begin to understand what she meant. He father, once a capable mighty man of words has been reduced to a lumbering creature of ridicule by Alzheimer’s. He was once the prince of clouds to her (he could once do anything) now, tragically, he is comical and ugly.

But there is more to it than that. Earlier in the article she refers to the strange conversations she now has with her father – conversations that are confusing and muddled and make you worry. Conversations where her father throws out vague accusations - and she is not sure whether they are warranted, or mere fiction from the addled brain of an Alzheimer’s sufferer.

I’ve had these weird surreal conversations with my dear old grandad (now aged 99 years 10 months old). The sort where he accuses the staff of stealing his meagre possessions, or where he tells me his late departed wife has visited him again, or that there is a conspiracy afoot to throw him out of his nursing home. I’ve been there when his look of intense concentration followed by: “Who are you?” indicates that on that particular day he has no recollection of who I am. It’s heartbreaking.

Marina doesn’t say it – but truth is, attending old people who are often confused is a burden. It’s a burden that those of us put in this position happily try to absorb into our daily life – but it’s a burden just the same. I know because of my grandad. I wouldn’t be human if i didn’t admit that sometimes, just sometimes – I’d rather stroll the beach with my camera, or have a coffee with a friend, or shop until I drop – than sit for just one more hour in a slightly smelly room, breathing in hot stale air and listening to confusion until it breaks my heart.

But, the guilt I feel if I give in to my selfishness is far greater than the pain of attendance. That’s the truth. So I visit whether I feel like it or not. That’s so hard  for me to admit. So, now you have it; I’m not some sort of Angel without a selfish thought in my head. I’m human.

And of course, all I’ve just written can in a way be summed up by the choice of the bird in the poem. You see, there is an English idiom that is often used to describe a difficult problem; it is an Albatross around your neck. Why? Suffice it to say, hanging an albatross around your neck is a huge problem, since the albatross is the largest (and heaviest) sea bird. The use of albatross means, “a seemingly inescapable moral or emotional burden, as of guilt, or anything burdensome that impedes action or progress” hence the phrase: albatross around one’s neck. It is an allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1798 poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

So, reading between the lines – Marina’s father recognises he is an albatross. He is a burden, a dead weight, he is troublesome, the bringer of guilt - it would be better to be rid of him. And deep down inside, hidden in the part of her she never exposes for public view – a still small voice probably whispers to her in the dead, dark of night: it’s true.

The Albatross

Often, to amuse themselves, the men of the crew
Catch those great birds of the seas, the albatrosses,
lazy companions of the voyage, who follow
The ship that slips through bitter gulfs.

Hardly have they put them on the deck,
Than these kings of the skies, awkward and ashamed,
Piteously let their great white wings
Draggle like oars beside them.

This winged traveler, how weak he becomes and slack!
He who of late was so beautiful, how comical and ugly!
Someone teases his beak with a branding iron,
Another mimics, limping, the crippled flyer!

The Poet is like the prince of the clouds,
Haunting the tempest and laughing at the archer;
Exiled on earth amongst the shouting people,
His giant’s wings hinder him from walking.

— Geoffrey Wagner, Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire (NY: Grove Press, 1974)

Incidentally, qute by chance:

On this very day in 1797 (June 15th) William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge began a walking holiday in the Quantock Hills of Somerset, during which they would conceive “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The original idea was to produce a gothic pot-boiler, something to suit the popular magazines, and to help pay for their vacation. In this poem, a mariner stops a man on the way to a wedding and recounts to him a tale of supernatural punishment and redemption. In the Antarctic region, the mariner’s ship is visited by an albatross, which is considered a sign of good luck. The mariner shoots the bird, for no clear reason, thus bringing a curse upon his ship. As punishment his fellow sailors hang the dead albatross around his neck, which the mariner cannot remove. The other sailors die from the curse; the mariner, alone, sees a vision and offers a prayer, after which the albatross falls off his neck into the sea.