On Monday, March 16, William Howard Landon and Marcia “Bee” Landon were killed in a major car collision outside of Ortonville, Minnesota. They were driving to Aberdeen, South Dakota. They were also my grandparents. My grandma was 82 and my pap was 86.
Blogs exist to hold early 90s nostalgia or rants about pop stars: not grief. I feel foolish to be blogging about this loss, but I don’t think I can make the transition from silence to your regularly scheduled Will Think For Food without saying something. Recognizing loss is important, and typing this helps, in whatever small way, to reify this still-new reality in which I now have no ties to the generation prior to that of my parents’.
A professor and friend of mine wrote to me recently, quoting E. M. Forster from Howard’s End, and I reproduce it here without commentary: “One death may explain itself, but it throws no light upon another: the groping inquiry must begin anew. Preachers or scientists may generalize, but we know that no generality is possible about whom we love; not one heaven awaits them, not even one oblivion.”
I loved my grandparents honestly and with great clarity. The service is this Friday, Good Friday, in Pittsburgh; my family and I travel north on Thursday and it feels important that we’ll be together, and that I write down these thoughts beforehand.
Blogs may not be built with architecture enough to bear grief’s heft, but poetry is. So:
TRYING TO HAVE SOMETHING LEFT OVER
There was a great tenderness to the sadness
when I would go there. She knew how much
I loved my wife and that we had no future.
We were like casualties helping each other
as we waited for the end. Now I wonder
if we understood how happy those Danish
afternoons were. Most of the time we did not talk.
Often I took care of the baby while she did
housework. Changing him and making him laugh.
I would say Pittsburgh softly each time before
throwing him up. Whisper Pittsburgh with
my mouth against the tiny ear and throw
him higher. Pittsburgh and happiness high up.
The only way to leave even the smallest trace.
So that all his life her son would feel gladness
unaccountably when anyone spoke of the ruined
city of steel in America. Each time almost
remembering something important that got lost.
—Jack Gilbert, from The Great Fires
Here’s to the things we lose, and the things left over. May we carry them with us always, even when they become so light we barely notice they’re there.
