We seem to be in the spirit of death, being in the middle of autumn, approaching Halloween and all Saint`s Day November 1st; we also call this month in French, le mois des morts (month of the dead). November 11th, being rememberance day where we pay tribute to all the soldiers who gave their lives for their country and for world peace. And so I continue on remembering another great man…my grandfather, when he died in his home, Princess, his old mongrel (spaniel mix) went down to the basement and howled grieving for her master. She stayed there for a week in mourning.
la mort d’un grand homme – Grandpapa
pinson est muet dernier souffle du maître, vieux chien hurle
death of a great man – Grandfather
blue-finch falls silent master’s last breath, old dog howls
Our host at Carpe Diem’s prompt is “A Departed Soul”. Many of the great masters of haiku wrote “death poems” about their own deaths. One of the “big five” who delivered haiku, Shiki wrote this on his deathbed:
morning dew evaporates in the early sunlight spirit climbs to the sky
@ Chevreuille
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crossing (haibun)
I love our host’s haiku because it reminds me of my GrandPapa who passed June 17th during the day. I don’t remember if it was morning but the “morning dew” makes me think of the river where we were brought up and where my grandfather died in his home.
The dove is often represented in “death” but its significance is more personal to me. In French the translation for “dove” is Colombe which is my mother’s name.
I love daisies. I feel connected to this flower as the petals represent the multiplicity of my personality. The layer of petals beneath the top layer are facets to be discovered throughout a lifetime. I remember, when working in homecare, how sad I would feel when a client passed. Weeks and months caring for a person in their homes was humbling for them and such a loss when they died. After a few years, I wrote to my supervisor that I could no longer continue working in this department for each person who died, I felt a petal from the daisy fall. If I continue, what will be left of me?
Here is my attempt in writing a haiku with this tone of “death poems”:
If my grandmother would have been born within the Aboriginal culture, for sure she would have been a wise elder and perhaps a Shaman. But she was a humble woman living by la rivière Yamaska; a village healer in many ways being a mid-wife, a go-to person if someone was sick from newborn to elderly. She had herbal remedies and others passed down to her from her mother and an old village doctor.
To this day, I still miss her when I am sick. For some reason her hand on my forehead and her homemade chicken broth comforted me. She spent hours and days with mothers in labour, sat by a dying person’s bed many late nights and even doctors called on her for help. Most people called called her Garde Daudelin OR GrandMaman.
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At Carpe Diem our host tells us about a Mongolian shaman named Batbayar. A beautiful story you can read more here of a Shaman and his apprentice. Our host wrote this in honour of the passing of this shaman.
To make this interesting for me, I searched where there were ealgles in Québec. In Northern and Eastern Québec there are many surprisingly, golden eagles. In the Gaspé Penninsula, residents are helping researchers with sightings as they are very proud of the eagle in their territory. (Gaspé is where Kerouac’s parents were from).
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I have heard from aboriginal youths that the Northern Lights are their ancestors from the “other side”, spirits revealing they are well.
[“Matsuo Basho (松尾 芭蕉, 1644–1694), born 松尾 金作, then Matsuo Chūemon Munefusa (松尾 忠右衛門 宗房),[2][3] was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest master of haiku (then called hokku).”] Read more here
Tournesol dans un Jardin 
