Songs from the Well: A Memoir of Love

By Adam Byrn Tritt

SSongs from the Well: A Memoir of Love is the remarkable chronicle of award-winning poet and author Adam Byrn Tritt’s love for his wife, Lee; his sudden and heartbreaking loss of her to brain cancer; and his struggle to find a way back to life, as told through essays and poetry written during their marriage and in the time since her passing. Tritt’s hope is that his experiences will help people who are grappling with a loved one's serious illness or loss, and will give their friends and families insight so they may better and more fully understand grief and loss.

“So gorgeous, this book! Such beautiful medicine for the human heart. We have lost touch with our ability to grieve well, culturally. We have lost the songs and stories, the ceremonies and rituals. In having the courage to share his own experience of the fullness of grief, Adam Byrn Tritt is helping us to remember, to return to this aspect of our humanity, and to restore these qualities which render it more fully precious and sacred.”
—Murshida VA, M.Ed., Ed.S., Harvard-trained healer, Sufi teacher, mystic poet, and musician

“Grief must be a terribly difficult subject to write about, but the author bravely rises to the occasion. At once heartbreaking and yet life-affirming, this book is a masterpiece of its kind.”
—Wayne McNeill, author, Songbook for Haunted Boys and Girls

Adam Byrn Tritt is an international bestselling and award winning poet, essayist, screenwriter, teacher, social activist, and humorist. Tritt is the author of Songs from the Well, The Phoenix and the Dragon: Poems of the Alchemical Trans­form­ation, several works of nonfiction, Tellstones: Runic Divination in the Welsh Tradition, the delightful (and slightly disturbing) Bud the Spud, and his newest book, Yom Kippur as Manifest in an Approaching Dorsal Fin, which has been lauded by both literary and scholarly sources.

Adam won the 2006 EPPIE Award for Poetry in an Anthology, and his first children's book, Bud the Spud, won the P&E Award for best Children's Book of 2012. In 1995 he was awarded an honorary doctorate for his work in religious tolerance and for the creation of TurningPoint, a nonprofit program providing alternative medicine to low-income individuals. He continues that passion today in the healthcare clinic he and his wife, Lee, dreamed of and created together--the Wellness Center.

He is equally at home speaking in lecture halls, giving public readings in bookstores, and visiting elementary school classrooms, where he can be found surrounded by children begging him to read Bud the Spud just one more time (while their parents and teachers beg him to stop).

Adam lives and writes--often simultaneously--in Palm Bay, Florida, with a dingo, and a ridiculously large alligator, all under a very big tree. You can find his stimulating blog--mostly essays, creative non-fiction, and poetry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Smithcraft Press
• Release date: Sep 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781629270005

Book preview

Songs from the Well paperback front cover.jpg

Songs from the Well

A Memoir of Love

Adam Byrn Tritt

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Copyright © 2013 by Adam Byrn Tritt. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America. Revised and expanded edition, September 2013.

ISBN 978-1-62927-000-5

Smithcraft Press

1921 Michels Drive NE

Palm Bay, FL 32905

www.SmithcraftPress.com

Dedication

You would think this book would be dedicated to Lee. To her life. Her bravery. Her love of those she was leaving. But it isn’t. It is dedicated to those left behind. Parents who outlive their children. Spouses who promised forever, and would have kept that promise with a glad heart, but found that forever ended much too soon. For those who fell and got back up again. And those who fell and could not get up. Could not come out of the well. For them, too.

But let’s give her the last word anyway. I would do it all over again. Remember, no one gets left behind. Now, go and be happy.

I’m trying.

Foreword

Lee Garnick Tritt, a dear friend, died on September 8, 2011. She was an acupuncture physician and the wife of Adam Byrn Tritt, one of my closest friends. She had brain cancer. From diagnosis through treatment to great suffering and then death was five months and eight days.

On September 11, we had what Adam called a Memorial Slumber Party for her. From Adam’s announcement:

Lee wanted a party when she died. She will have it. People talking and having a good time. Wear comfortable clothing. You KNOW she won’t like it if you dress up. Dungarees and t-shirts are just fine. Pajamas are great. Loose and comfy. Colorful and fun. If you wear black, I swear I will take you outside with a can of spray paint! We’ll be starting at seven, but who knows how long the storytelling will go on. There’s lots to say. Anyone who wants to, as often as we like, will tell stories about her. What she did, how they met, funny stuff, strange stuff, Lee stuff. What made Lee Lee.

Interspersed might be some music, a poem or two. And then more stories. Until we’ve all said what we wanted to say. Until we are storied out. We have plenty of space to sleep—cushions, floors, rugs, pillows, guest bed, sofas, lounge chairs, recliners—so no worries about staying too late. If we stay up all night regaling each other with tales of Lee, that is perfect. That is wonderful.

So cry if you need to, laugh and smile if you can. But think of her and be here for her. Bring your stories and we can all learn a little more about her as we send her on. Let the Tall Lee Tales commence and let them grow wide and deep and legend. And some day, maybe they’ll be big enough to match how much she meant to each of us.

At the memorial, we said Kaddish for Lee in its original language—Aramaic, an offshoot of Hebrew that developed during the Diaspora and continued to be used for a dozen centuries. The Kaddish—that is, the so-called Mourner’s Kaddish that is recited for the dead in Jewish prayer services—was originally prayed by rabbis after their sermons as a sort of doxology, a short hymn of praise. Adam read my translation (not quite a literal rendering):

Yitgadal v’yitkadash shemai raba . . .

Great and holy is your great Name

in this world you created by your will!

May your true reign begin

in our lifetime,

in our days,

in the lives of all who Struggle—

swiftly—

soon!

Let your great Name be blessed

for all ages to come—

blessed, praised, glorified, exalted,

extolled, honored, lifted up, lauded

be the Name of the Holy One,

blessed be you,

far beyond all blessings

and hymns and praises and consolations

that are spoken in the world.

Let great peace descend on us from the heavens!

Let life be renewed for us and for all who Struggle!

You who make peace in the heavens,

make peace for us.

Make peace for all who Struggle.

As you can see, it’s not a prayer of mourning at all. It’s a mountain of praise. It’s thanksgiving and acceptance in the face of pain and death. It’s the rebellious act of clinging to life and shouting to the heavens in the face of despair and loss.

All who Struggle is my translation for Yisra’el. The name probably means God has striven, or God has saved. But the book of Genesis gives a different folk etymology: the one who wrestled with God (yet lived to tell the tale).

Jacob’s wrestling with the angel was a symbol of each person’s lifelong struggle with God, with self, with death, with life; the angel struck Jacob in the thigh socket so he limped ever afterwards—you may survive the encounter, but you’ll never be the same.

In Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3, The Kaddish, the narrator confronts God, and in a certain respectful fury, accuses God of breaking faith with humankind, and by the end of the piece calls for both sides to suffer and recreate each other.

Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg (1894–1956) is an elegy for his mother Naomi. Invoking both prophecy as in the Hebrew Anthem and "the Buddhist Book