Please join Synkroniciti in welcoming Washingtonian poet Kristin Roedell with “That Silent Word,” recounting the heart-breaking story of a couple in their elder years who become separated as dementia and cognitive decline land the husband in a nursing facility and Covid-19 breaks out. “It was only chance that it was then the virus/ swept the houses, the streets, the cities./ At the care center, you could not come in./ He never knew why, just that the soft place/ he used to lean towards left him.” He is left to die alone; his wife only allowed in to tend his lifeless body. “You spoke that silent word that passes/ between lovers when their time has ended…” The vulnerability of her touch on his skin and the undressing and preparation of his body are likened to that of the woman in the Bible (Gospel of Luke, Chapter 7) who anoints the feet of Jesus with tears. Both acts contain a sense of mortality and loss mixed with a hope that death is not the final word. Kristin embues the experience with a softness that stems from muted alliterative music (lots of softly voiced or gently unvoiced consonants) and repetition. The effect is cathartic. Most, if not all, of us, lost people we loved to Covid and all too many of us could not be there in their last moments because of safety concerns. Even “natural” deaths, like this one, could not be attended or witnessed. Kristin encourages us to speak to our dead, to allow ourselves the healing gained by expressing our grief and longing, to make whatever connection is possible.
Read “That Silent Word” in Synkroniciti’s “Belonging” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Kristin Roedell graduated from Whitman College (B.A. English 1984) and the University of Washington Law School (J.D. 1987). She practiced family law for 10 years in the Pacific Northwest.
Her poetry has been published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Switched on Gutenberg, CHEST, and VoiceCatcher, among many others. She is the author of a chapbook (Girls with Gardenias, 2012, Flutter Press), and a full length poetry collection (Downriver, Aldrich Press, 2015.) She lives with her family in rural Washington, with five cats and an alpaca named Cookie.
Check out her website, Sacred Ground Poetry, http://kristinroedell.wikidot.com/.