Remembering Timm O'Cobhthaigh: Cnoc Cobhain

Columcille (Sept. 30)

Morning bro -- I sit on a bench
behind Cnoc Cobhain up on Signal Hill,
facing that trilithon which looks like
three wide stones topped by a one-ton
arrowhead of black slate. It’s aimed
straight at the Manannan megalith at
the far end of the park, though Dad
says it’s aligned to receive, through
its gate, first light of the winter solstice.
He buried some of your ashes in
the dirt of its floor, mixing you truly
dust to dirt in the earth of our bourne:
huge shadows cover your traces here.

It’s cooler this morning, upper 50s
at best, the sky somewhat clouded --
rain later today, more tears for you.
Mom emailed last night to say she’d
read the St. Paul blog and cried
as I confessed crying,
feeling your loss as sharply as I,
as if no time had elapsed since
that terrible bright day in Spring
when the phone rang with you
never again on the other end.
She’d later called Christie to see how
she was doing but your wife-
and life-to-be was inconsolable,
down in the hardest leagues of grief,
hanging up in such tears my mother
worries for her.

I called Mom this morning and we cried
together a while, mother and son in unison
grief for you, wanting you back,
knowing you’re gone. A hard day
but that’s hardly the worst
of it -- the stock market fell
777 points yesterday on the news
that the House failed to pass the
700 billion dollar bailout package.
So instead the market lost about
a trillion dollars in value -- some tradeoff.
Not much of a world to live in
these days, bro, compared to the
water womb you now swim freely in.
Who knows what will happen today:
the national drama has been wild
for the past three weeks,
worse and worse steps stumbling
down an economic stair of what
seems like greased iron,
dragging us all down to ends
we can’t -- or won’t -- imagine.

I wonder how your old boss
Congresswoman Hooley voted
on Monday -- for the bailout I’d bet,
earnest to do well for her people
& country, not facing re-election.
Dad told me something this
morning over coffee that I didn’t know
from any of the sources you’d left
behind on your laptop,
that you were considering
running for Rep. Hooley’s House seat,
deciding not to (or rather, forced
by circumstances again) when
you found out that there wasn’t
enough time to change party
affiliation (you were a registered
Independent -- ha ha, just like me --)
before the filing date.

My bro the congressman -- of course.
It makes perfect sense now to me.
Probably to Hooley too, for she
obviously thought the world of you,
for all of your distractions and wounds.
Had you spoken to her of running?
She cried the whole time sitting behind
me at your memorial service, and when
she got up to speak she said you
were the one who reached out
first to those who needed help most.
Just the sort of person we
need in Washington.

That reflex to care was deep and
old in your nature: Mom says an
early-grade teacher had remarked
on your zeal, to fault, for springing
up to help whatever kid was in distress.
Ah bro, you would have made a fine
congressman with such earnestness
to love and do good. With all of
your friends and connections in Oregon,
you might just have won. But then
I think of the liabilities -- your thoughts
hampered by the head injury back
in ‘81, the dark corners of story
which your ex-wife was so sure of
that you had to change your name
to keep working in the field.
Perhaps love of Christie meant more
to you than making such a move;
you had your AA work and your church,
deeply rooted where you lived.

And then there was that bum
heart of yours, failing to keep
up with your hard-running spirit,
giving up your ghost when a
massive clot formed around
a tear in your anterior descending
artery that cold Salem night
when you ran for the last time.
Besides, what a mess you would have found
in Washington -- it probably would have
killed you, trying to help 300 million
citizens of this country.

Instead your spirit hikes the hills of heaven
and your dust is here, some of it at least,
buried in the dirt under Cnoc Cobhain,
more of under a floor stone the chapel
50 yards down into the woods (I can see it
from here where I sit), the rest
of your remains in a small urn
on Christie’s dark shelf of pain,
waiting for her to feel free enough
of the oppression of your loss
to scatter those ashes in some
spot of wild Oregon you loved most.

Considering the news today, plus all
the other stuff there is to contend with --
another bad migraine today, worry
and lack and aging combined, I’m
still not sure you got the better deal,
that there are souls in heaven
whose eternal reward is your smile.

Darn, this pen’s running dry --

... I’m in the chapel now, using the
pen from the guest book, having left
Cnoc Cobhain and walked down Signal
Hill past the pond, over the small stone
bridge onto the field, entering the St.
Oran bell tower praying to enter your world
in spirit and imagination at least (Oran
being the tuletary saint of the Iona
boneyard). Stood in that tall round
stone structure looking up at the sky
(autumnal, clouded blue & cool,
maple leaves hanging over still very green),
the view matching perfectly
the photo you took from the same
vantage in April 2007 when you were here
for Dad’s 80th birthday. (The only
difference is that the branches of
the maple were bare).

Did you know that picture has become
a Columcille classic, used again and again
in their newsletter and on gift cards
and a beautiful book that was given to
Dad when he retired last June from
the board? For me it was like
stepping into your shoes and I
started to cry, staring with your
wonder at God’s blue sky.
I walked on through the other
door of the chapel onto the field
with its circle of standing stones
too bright in the morning light,
migraine and grief my soul’s malaise,
the sky too coldly blue,
like the sea so bereft of you.

Here in the chapel just a ways
in the woods from the field
it’s a tad warmer than outside
and minus the gnats. Our silence,
again, is complete: it makes me
want to read aloud to you this letter
as I have written it, trying to
hear your voice sing back in the lower
registers of stone’s echo, coming
from somewhere other than under
that flat dead stone which bears
our symbols -- water, wind and wave --
but not your name. You’re too
present for that in this aching
blue heart of mine today.

Mom and Dad join me now here
as do Molly and Will and all
of the hundreds of people you
touched with a smile and kind words
and those bouquets of unutterably
beautiful healing pictures of God’s
world: Gifts you have been giving
all the way back to that first
suffering other you saw and ran
to, offering a handful of water --
no, wind -- no heaven -- in your
tiny pale hands. Giving it in full
that you might receive
the bounty of blue skies,
the deep mother’s sea.