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The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics

ISSN: 2472-7318

The Body Cannot Sustain an Insurrection: Poem and Reflection

Susan Naomi Bernstein


Keywords: parent death, insurrection

 

Categories: As If the Pandemic Wasn’t Enough: Tales of Loss and Grief; (De)Constructing Writing

 

Content warning: Parent death

 


Part 1:  Poem

Pantoum for January 6, 2021: The Body Cannot Sustain an Insurrection,

(Or, As the Capitol Riot was Beginning, My Father Died of Covid-19) 

The body cannot sustain an insurrection.
It happened fast with my father’s Covid.
On the day of a snowstorm in New York,
I Zoomed him in Arizona and discovered his confusion.
 
It happened fast with my father’s Covid.
At first the going seemed so slow
On the day of a snowstorm in New York
As he tested negative at assisted living.
 
At first the going seemed so slow.
Then the fever hit my father 
As he tested negative at assisted living, 
Finally testing positive at the hospital.
 
Then the fever hit my father
And he encountered Covid with all due speed,
Finally testing positive at the hospital.
My father returned to assisted living as he gasped for air,
 
And he encountered Covid with all due speed.
“No news is good news,” his caregivers told me.
My father returned to assisted living as he gasped for air,
On Zoom, his oxygen dropping with every breath.
 
“No news is good news,” his caregivers told me,
Forgetting to mention the stroke that stopped his words 
On Zoom, his oxygen dropping with every breath.
While holding my father in my heart, Covid strangled his lungs,  
 
Forgetting to mention the stroke that stopped his words,
His caregivers held the phone to my dying father’s ear. 
While holding my father in my heart, Covid strangled his lungs.
The body cannot sustain an insurrection.

 

Part 2: Reflection

First Generation | Second Generation | Regeneration: Making a Poem

1.  First Generation: Chemistry (My father in 1947)

Photo description: Three white high school students stand at a table in an old-fashioned chemistry lab. The blond boy in front mixes chemicals in test tubes. A blond student of indeterminate gender stands directly behind him. A third student, a boy, stands to the left of the blond students. The blond students wear muted colors and are posed close together. The third student, a boy, is shorter than the other two students. He has black hair parted to the side, and he wears an apron over a shirt with a large black-and-white checkered pattern.

High School Yearbook Photo 1 (1947)

Caption: Electrolysis of H2O

 

2.  Second Generation: Dostoevsky (My Father’s Daughter in 1976)

In a Cold War-era classroom, a high school girl sits sideways in a narrow plastic chair with an attached desk. To her side is a row of empty chairs underneath a window, and behind her is a chalkboard. She has black hair touching her shoulders and she wears a white shirt with cartoon characters underneath a pair of overalls. A stack of books and a small book bag are placed on the desk. The girl is reading a thick paperback book.

High School Yearbook photo 2 (1976)

Caption: S. Bernstein is totally absorbed in Dostoevsky

 

3.  Regeneration: Flashbacks (My father’s daughter in April 2021)

My father fell ill in late December, even as papers had been signed for him to receive the new vaccine. But the vaccine rollout was delayed for elders in congregate care, and by the beginning of January, Arizona was at the center of the Covid-19 pandemic. I was responsible for coordinating my father’s medical care from New York. Coping with delayed vaccination as well, I was unable to travel to see him.

In January, a week after my father died, the non-denominational hospice chaplain called from Arizona to offer condolences. “Don’t worry,” the hospice chaplain said, “your father was old. He was going to die anyway. How old are you?”

“I am in my early sixties.”

“Oh, you don’t sound very old.”

“I am young at heart,” I said, trying to keep my voice from breaking. The condolence call ended soon afterward.

In March, my cat became gravely ill after swallowing a piece of fabric. Because of Covid-19 restrictions, I could not wait at the animal hospital to hear the results of the surgery. A member of the veterinary surgical team called me at home during the operation. My cat’s spleen looked worrisome. Should the surgeon remove it? After hearing the explanation of the possible positive and negative outcomes, I almost sobbed. “I don’t know,” I said, “I just did this for my father two months ago.” Then I could not speak. The team member brought me gently back to the moment. I decided my cat’s spleen should be removed.

For several weeks afterward, my cat lived in a surgical suit and an e-collar, suffering through an abscess and an accidental overdose of antibiotics. Fortunately, my cat’s resilience persisted, and about a month later, the recovery was complete. But I could not stop the screaming in my brain. 

In April, masked and socially distanced, I began taking outdoor yoga classes in a park near my home. One day after class, as my partner held me close, I started shaking.

I could see my father on our last Zoom call, two days before he died. My father’s face was emaciated, and I could hear his labored breathing. He tried talking to me with his eyes, his eyes that looked into mine and looked like mine. Two days later, on January 6, 2021, my father’s caregivers called. We were without video. His caregivers said my father was in his last moments. I caught my breath and found words to say good-bye. Twenty-four hundred miles away over the phone, my father died.

In the other room, as my father was dying, my partner watched live-streaming news on a laptop and did not yet know about my father. My partner entered the room and then I saw the livestream. Crowds of people ran up the steps of the Capitol and overwhelmed the police. The crowds ran and ran until they breached the Capitol entrance. “Turn it off,” I cried. “Get those people off that screen. My father is dead.”

Months later, the flashbacks after yoga were debilitating. After I reiterated these events on telehealth, my therapist changed my medication and then suggested homework. “Write one page describing the most difficult scene from your flashbacks,” said my therapist.

“They’re all difficult,” I replied, “There are too many to choose from. That’s the problem.”

“Compress the most difficult scene,” my therapist offered, “that might help.”

I told my therapist that I would try.

Writing, a comfort in other times, felt nearly impossible now. I rolled the flashbacks around in my mind and replayed them slowly with discernment, attempting to choose. I tried to write in sentences and paragraphs and felt flooded again. Then I thought of poetry, of pantoums with controlled line repetitions. In trying to find adequate repeating lines. I found the detachment to write about my father’s death.

No writing is easy, and my words still felt shaky, much like flowers attempting to blossom in heavy April rain. Inside my room, the storm was all around me. I could almost feel sharp drops of rain on my face. Cautiously, I pulled on two masks and my hat like petals and walked out to meet the Spring.

The background shows the redbrick wall of an apartment building. In front of the wall, yellow forsythia bloom. An older white woman stands in front of the forsythia. Only her head and upper torso can be seen. The woman wears a black watch cap and a green sweater. She has a gray right-side ponytail that reaches just beyond her shoulders. On her face she wears black-framed tinted glasses and a black mask. The edges of a blue paper mask and white ear loops peek out from underneath the black mask. Her head is tilted upward.

Unpublished Photo (2021)

No caption

 


Bio

Susan Naomi Bernstein: Susan Naomi Bernstein’s most recent publication is “After Basic Writing,” part of “Symposium: Cultivating Action across Two-Year College Contexts,” edited by A. Hubrig in TETYC, 49(3), March 2022. Susan blogs for Bedford Bits with Macmillan Learning, and has published on writing pedagogy and Louisa May Alcott. Susan lives, works, and quilts in Queens, New York.