Sometimes Grief: Barks up the Wrong Tree

By Vincent Quatroche

The title for this collection of prose and poetry Sometimes Grief barks up the wrong tree came to me in the late Spring of 2011 during an ensuing period of significant change and a series of disappointing struggles with some of the more harsh realities of life. The passing of my Father on Easter Sunday was hardly an unanticipated event. His decline was (for the most part) mercifully brief and he left the earth with loved ones present, in his own home and quite peacefully. The rituals of saying goodbye were observed with the usual decorum and to be honest? That part of dealing with the inevitable demise of life of a beloved father was actually a quiet sort of sad comfort in the memory of a good man and vibrant artist. I thought I was adjusted to that.
Not so. What ensued on a personal level was a real old fashion shit storm of confusion, doubt, despondency and loss. Normal you say? To be expected? Perhaps. On the surface maybe, but such a world of chaos descended that it virtually affected every aspect of my life. And then one late Spring morning after teaching a class at a local community college a phrase resounded in my mind as clear as a bell. Sometimes grief-barks of the wrong tree. It was a revelation really. Surely not an answer to anything, merely a sort of internal realization. A recognition.
I was in fact grieving, angry and ashamed that my intense personal feelings of sadness and loss were not wholly directed to my Dad being gone. No. I was furious the world with all of its confusion, contradictions and uncertainties that had encroached upon what I perceived should have the appropriate grief towards my recent loss. I felt my emotional interior had been hijacked by worldly concerns. Someone or something was diverting and demanding my attention and energy towards a dead end of self centered remorse, regret and devastation.
Intellectually I accepted, (even understood) someone very close to me had left. Died. But I discovered much to my embarrassment that I was ill-equipped to deal with the more collateral damage of the off-the-rack influence of others in my life and while it was true I once cared deeply about them, I now had to face the unpleasant truth that the relationship with them had now gone toxic and was damaging and draining my strength to move on to the next chapter of my life.
I couldnt let it go. And the same time it was like holding a burning white hot ember in the palm of my hand. I responded by closing my hand into a fist and holding the pain tighter. I ran wildly with it, quitting long time teaching positions that represented normalcy, purpose and economic stability. In short ? I was gutting my life. Serving every tie, except the right one.
I was determined to hold on steadfast to that smoldering coal in my fist. I wondered what would come first. It would simply burn out or burn a whole through my flesh.
At this point I must make this clear. There was yet a third level to the grief. I felt I was being delusional. Indulgencing in private, pointless emotional suicide. I was trying to kill my feelings while entire world out there had real problems. Serious tangible sorrows and pains that dwarfed my perceived issues and again I was ashamed at my transparent mini-drama I was perpetrating upon myself. Shutting it all down inside myself switch by switch. My mothers situation for example certainly could be taken into account. She had lost her husband and life companion of over fifty years and now at an advanced age herself had to deal with his absence on daily basis in the family home they shared practically their entire adult lives. Ive provided a unique perspective into her own experience in dealing with grief in the section of this collection entitled The Edna Variations.
So I did the usual self medicating prescriptions that depressed individuals do. With a vengeance. Thankfully I eventually grew bored with that. So I returned to an old friend. My oldest friend. My self- expressi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9781469131351

Vincent Quatroche

Coughed up somewhere in the Terrible Now the public at large and critics agree that probably Vincent Quatroche doesnt really exist other than a rather speculative wild fiction were limited attention spans stare into electronic 3.2 inch plastic rectangles. Embracing both encroaching age and perpetual obscurity is every beat poets dream without either the benefit of reasonable perspective or rationale behavior. Career Educator and Poet Vincent Quatroche refuses to just get lost. A truly disturbing afterthought he insists in sticking around like duct tape. While insolence as persistence is hardly a virtue, he will seldom read you the same poem twice, unless you are asking for it. Originally from Long island he is currently languishing in over-State NY teaching at regional colleges. He is a published author of numerous creative projects, including Books, CDs & Videos. His poetry has been distributed and pulverized into the Cyber Void throughout the United States and abroad.

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Vincent Quatroche.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011961843

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4691-3134-4

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4691-3133-7

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4691-3135-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

108031

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Forward

Bad Poetry Side Effects

The Bank of Infinity

Time

Still time

Just a Matter of Time

Don’t Look There

Nothing to See Here

Cedric Song #1

New Decade Shorts

You on Ice

Super Bowl XLVlll (48)

Orange Crush Bottle in the Snow

Heart Attack Snow

Black Snow

To Catch the Light

Continue with Me

Mixed Signals

Prism

Driven by it

Her Missing Face

Bad Dream at Dawn

Fragments of the March

Mad March World

The Serial Deviationist

Of texture and Color

Last Day of Winter

See Cedric

Kees left in Ignition

Happens Every Spring

The Edna Variations

After You’re Gone

On The Feast of St. Anthony

Pentecost Sunday

Short Dog Sunday

My Mother, The Daily News and the 4th Dimension

Rage

Pop Just told me

Birth Mark Sister

Two Funerals

Night Nip

Spring Fragments 2010

The Confessional Train

In an April Moment

The Missing Thread

Dali Dreams

One Shitty Spring Fragments 2011

That Little Red Car

Hammer on a Budget

Gender Blender

Haunted by Women

Hit the Road Jack

The Sure Thing in the Missing Link

Disassemble

May Fragments 2009

Don’t Ask

Back Fence Neighbors

Another Memorial Day

Summer 2/6/1996-6/30/2011

V Formation

Creative Sentencing

The Old Man’s Fault

Double Nickel Refections

It’s Kidde Pool Time

Corn Flake

Summer Fragments 2010

Behind this rain curtain

Dwindling Shadows of June

Manhattan Partitions

Two Sets of Books

Matinee Idol

End of July

Trophy Poet

Silent Sound

Sound Light

The Celestial Butterfield

There Never Will Be… . 

Unhaunted

But Not Today

But not Today

You Must Fight it

Still Swinging

First Light in Syracuse

Fall from the Clouds

October Pages 2009

Seen

Bright

October Older

This Other wheel

The Glow over the Bone Yard

October Nocturne

Mid-October Series 2010

Cedric Song #2

Dreaming of Them

First Touch of

Fall Fragments 2011

The Colleagues Talk

Inter-Dimensional Coordinator

Taken out in the American Trash 1471 1st Ave. NYC Halloween 10/2010

After Irene

Arrangements

Maybe Some Novocain ?

Past Between

One Night in York

The Hardening

Along the Road

Insisting Cedric

When you Open Me

Sometimes Grief

Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows.

William Shakespeare

The writer who cares more about words than about story—characters, action, setting, atmosphere—is unlikely to create a vivid and continuous dream; he gets in his own way too much; in his poetic drunkenness, he can’t tell the cart—and its cargo—from the horse.

John Gardner

Storytelling is healing. As we reveal ourselves in story, we become aware of the continuing core of our lives under the fragmented surface of our experience. We become aware of the multifaceted, multi-chaptered ‘I’ who is the storyteller. We can trace out the paradoxical and even contradictory versions of ourselves that we create for different occasions, different audiences… Most important, as we become aware of ourselves as storytellers, we realize that what we understand and imagine about ourselves is a story. And when we know all this, we can use our stories to heal and make ourselves whole.

Susan Wittig Albert

The end of an ox is beef, and the end of a lie is grief

African Proverb

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Cover Art

Krupa

By

Vincent Quatroche Sr.

And thank you M

PREVIOUS WORKS

Another Rubber Eden 1997

Attitude House 2002

Greetings From Gridville 2006

Cyberstein 2007

The Terrible Now 2009

Short Dog Stories 2011

FORWARD

The title for this collection of prose and poetry came to me in the late Spring of 2011 during an ensuing period of significant change and a series of disappointing struggles with some of the more harsh realities of life. The passing of my Father on Easter Sunday was hardly an unanticipated event. His decline was (for the most part) mercifully brief and he left the earth with loved ones present, in his own home and quite peacefully. The rituals of saying goodbye were observed with the usual decorum and to be honest? That part of dealing with the inevitable demise of life of a beloved father was actually a quiet sort of sad comfort in the memory of a good man and vibrant artist. I thought I was adjusted to that.

Not so. What ensued on a personal level was a real old fashion shit storm of confusion, doubt, despondency and loss. Normal you say? To be expected? Perhaps. On the surface maybe, but such a world of chaos descended that it virtually affected every aspect of my life. And then one late Spring morning after teaching a class at a local community college a phrase resounded in my mind as clear as a bell. Sometimes grief-barks of the wrong tree. It was a revelation really. Surely not an answer to anything, merely a sort of internal realization. A recognition.

I was in fact grieving, angry and ashamed that my intense personal feelings of sadness and loss were not wholly directed to my Dad being gone. No. I was furious the world with all of its confusion, contradictions and uncertainties that had encroached upon what I perceived should have the appropriate grief towards my recent loss. I felt my emotional interior had been hijacked by worldly concerns. Someone or something was diverting and demanding my attention and energy towards a dead end of self centered remorse, regret and devastation.

Intellectually I accepted, (even understood) someone very close to me had left. Died. But I discovered much to my embarrassment that I was ill-equipped to deal with the more collateral damage of the off-the-rack influence of others in my life and while it was true I once cared deeply about them, I now had to face the unpleasant truth that the relationship with them had now gone toxic and was damaging and draining my strength to move on to the next chapter of my life.

I couldn’t let it go. And the