Storyteller of the Week

Roseanne Freed

 

 Photo of Mahalia and Roseanne Freed by Reuben Freed

Roseanne Freed was born in South Africa, raised her children in Canada, and now lives with her husband in Los Angeles.  Retired from the J. Paul Getty Museum, she is currently an outdoor educator who shares her love of nature with school children by leading hikes in the Santa Monica Mountains. Her poems have appeared in Blue Heron Review, Contrary Magazine, Lothlorien, MacQueens Quinterly, ONE ART, Silver Birch Press, Verse-Virtual, and Writing in a Woman’s Voice.  She’s been nominated for the Best of the Net. Her poem, A Poem Begins With a Lump In The Throat was the 10th most read poem on One Art in 2022. She is currently shopping her first chapbook, The Mouth Feels Lonely and Needs To Chew which is a collection of poems that explores her feelings of grief after her daughter, Mahalia, died at the age of forty-one.

I fell in love with Roseanne’s honest visceral, raw poetry from the moment I read her powerful poignant poem in the April 2022 issue of Verse-Virtual:

The hardest part?

 

Your life will never be the same,

Suzanne said after my daughter passed away.

The hardest part?

The rawness of grief.

The nightmare doesn’t end with the rising sun.

No cups of tea can cure

the inconsolable ache or fatigue.

 

Though her death wasn’t sudden

it wasn’t expected, 

Cancer in someone as healthy

as Mahalia, didn’t make sense.

After the diagnosis her message to us,

Don’t weep or be depressed 

I am determined to fight this monster. 

And win.

I believed her. 

We all did. 

Don’t you have to be old to die?

I prayed. 

Yes, the atheist prayed.

When the oncologist said, 

Only a few weeks,

a brave exterior hid her fear 

of dying. In constant pain, 

she took opioids 

so she could hug her small children.

I altered my prayers, offered 

to shave my hair, 

forgo meat, alcohol, chocolates…            

She died. 

The hardest part?

Learning to say— 

May her memory be for a blessing,

about my child.

In my comments to the V-V community, I shared that I too had lost a child and the hardest part is there is nothing you can do to stop death or bring them back. Since then, Roseanne and I, both insomniacs, have spent day after day and night after night bonding, by sharing our poetry and our daily lives through email.

 

Roseanne not only writes from the heart, but she tugs on my heart strings and shatters my heart in the process as she shares her life story in her signature writing style that no poet can duplicate.

 

I am honored that she shared with me these unpublished poems baring the truths and secrets of her life, the first two from her manuscript, The Mouth Feels Lonely and Needs to Chew.

 

 

Our Time Together, Too Short

 

My sweet Mahalia, born after two days labor

with all those lucky sevens—

17/7/78 at 7:07pm weighing 7lbs 7 oz,

 

the baby who grew fat and healthy

nursing at my breast for a whole year,

but I only have one photo,

 

the one-year-old who crawled into the fridge

to get at the pickles and olives,

but didn’t care for cake, or candy,

 

the little cutie (she was always small)

with an infectious laugh, who loved

the hot sun and running around in the nude,

 

the inquisitive, intelligent child

with a remarkable early command of language,

who’d put a book in my hand, climb

 

onto my lap, and wait for me to read,

her favorites stories from age two

were of the two Peters—Rabbit and Pan—

 

the munchkin who hung upside down

from the top of the jungle gym

her dad built under the cherry tree,

 

the toothless Tinkerbelle

with a bag of Halloween

candy which she forgot to eat,  

 

the girl who rode bikes and horses,

also hiked, swam, and canoed

in Northern lakes every summer,

 

the young woman passionate about healing

and herbs, who became a Naturopathic Doctor,

birthed her two children at home,

 

but never cared about cars, preferring

to ride her bike – even to chemo

dates in the Canadian winter.

 

I loved her even when I didn’t love her.

 

Samsara

                        Hold the sadness and pain of samsara in your heart.  

                        Then the warrior can make a proper cup of tea.

                                    —Chogyam Trungpa

 

You died. It took me a while to understand 

I hadn’t caused your cancer — We all die.

We all live with grief. They say I’ll laugh

again one day — My friend Anne 

committed suicide at Niagara Falls, her kids

same ages as mine. A picture taken two decades

 

ago at Niagara Falls, my parents with my uncle 

visiting from Israel. Religious, he drank his tea 

Middle Eastern style in a glass with lemon.

For the Sabbath — Shabbat Shalom —

my mother had to keep the bathroom light

on for twenty-four hours. You always left 

 

two or three cups of tea around the house

and we daren’t throw those sips away. Rooibos,

with rice milk. What a fuss when our religious

 

niece visited us. We had to cover a shelf

in the fridge with paper towels for her kosher

ready-roast-chicken. Age eight, you silently

watched as she ate her special food on paper

plates with plastic cutlery. Not wanting to waste

we had her leftovers the next day —But Mummy,

you said, It tastes of chicken. The F.D.A

 

warns two ounces of black licorice daily

for two weeks can cause heart rhythm problems. 

It’s my favorite candy. Am I eating too much? 

I know you didn’t treat family, but you’re a doctor.

I still have the licorice caplets you gave me —

For energy, you said. 

 

            Where are you?   Please call.

 

                                                Listen.   You will hear me.     

 

I found a postcard you sent us with a picture of a loon:

paddling in a small lake

                 we came upon a moose munching things,

                 stopping to watch her we heard loons

                 and the wind in the silence,

                 while the bugs feasted on us.

 

Paddling with you and the loons

across those silent lakes,

I try to hear you.

 

Why didn’t I know

I’d need to remember your laughter?

 

Letter to My Sister After I Nearly Drowned



The most important thing is to remember the most important thing.

— Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi

You were six when Mom asked you

to watch me. What did you know

about protecting your two-year-old



sister? You rode your bike around

the hotel pool. I followed. No one told us

not to. It was winter—the swim pool



a filthy pond, thick with detritus

and frogs. You heard the splash

as I fell into the deep end,



knew I was going to drown

and you’d be blamed—so you hid.

Thankfully not for long. I think.



Roseanne fell in the water, you told

Mom, who couldn’t swim,

who screamed for our two older



brothers—age ten and twelve—

who hearing her hysteria ran

over, and jumped in fully clothed



to save me. Lifeless when pulled out

the cold water. Mom wept,

We’ve lost her, but our brothers



intuitively placed me face down

and pressed out the water.

I coughed, breathed, we all cried,



and Dad rushed home from work.

The nearest doctor in that African

town was the pharmacist,



A miracle, he said.

God works mysteriously, Mom said.



Our mother whom everyone agreed

was a loving, wonderful parent,

told us kids at her 90th birthday celebration



she hadn’t jumped in to try save me,

because she couldn’t disobey

her own mother, who taught her,



never get into water when menstruating.



A confession. Not an apology.

And you carried the guilt all this time.



Thank you for not drowning,

you told me a few years ago.