Haiku My Heart

July 27, 2012

Every Friday, we come together and share. We write and do show and tell through our poetic words. Friends have been made and the circle grows as we visit each other. Have a look. See if you'd like to join us. You can find all you need at Rebecca's recuerda mi corazon.

Maggie, Please come back

I knew you would, if you could

Never ending dream

Thirty Nine. She’d have been thirty nine on the 26th of July, 2012. That was yesterday. We had cake after dinner. I try to remember more, but the years have taken away some of it. 

The last time I saw her in person was at her high school graduation on a Monday night in June, 1991, June 4th. It was held in downtown St. Paul at the Roy Wilkins auditorium. Then, we went to Applebee’s and had dinner.

Graduation night, June 4, 1991, with her friends Bobby and Adrienne, in the green dress

The next day, her Mom and sisters and I left to live and work in Northern Minnesota at a YMCA Camp called Camp Menogyn. Maggie stayed in St. Paul and had a small efficiency apartment a few blocks from her work and on the bus line, so in the Fall, she could take the bus to classes at the University of Minnesota.

Maggie inn the steps of her apartment building, 1991

Instead of the typical kid going off to college and the family staying back in the home town, we went off to work way up on the Canadian border and the kid stayed in the home town.

My fondest memory, the scene that I see over and over in my mind’s eye, was when I went to Camp Menogyn for a few weeks the month before, May of 1991. I went to set up the kitchen and orientate myself to the logistics of the camp.

The day I returned, I was up in the apartment and Maggie got home from school. She bounded up the flight of stairs that led to our apartment on Goodrich Avenue. I see her coming up that stairwell, screaming and smiling, in a hurry to get up there to see me, her dad, because I had been away. I remember the thunderous noise of her footsteps as she rushed up the wooden steps in her exuberance.

I’m glad that is the memory I see. I wish I would wake up now, and have it all be a dream. My God how I miss her.

I can’t help but wonder what things would be like if this tragic event hadn’t taken place. She was already in college at 17, with multiple post-secondary education credits. Her boyfriend, Bobby Jens, was already the perfect, respectful, courageous son-in-law, and that was when they were dating! She had achieved things that many people don’t achieve in a lifetime, like her acceptance into the first class of the Rudy Perpich Center for the Arts.

I wrote a song some short time after she left us. I noticed that some of the lines fit right into the 5-7-5 Haiku, so I am using it today for Haiku My Heart. After all, nothing has ever touched my heart more than my children and Grandchildren. Maggie was our first born child. She taught me what love is. So, the Haiku is truly from the heart, about the heart and for the heart and soul of a family.

Here are the words, I have never put a title on this:

When I was young

I followed my dreams

My friends thought I was crazy

With some of my schemes

But you stood by me, baby

Through good and through bad

Now the dream is over

The end is so sad

Chorus

Maggie, please come back

I knew you would if you could

Through twenty years of marriage

The love did divide

‘Twas a Pearl named Maggie

So sweet and sublime

She awakened our spirits

And of others around

Made her mark on the world

Her legend lives on

Chorus

Life is a card game

The luck of the draw

It was comin’ up aces

But fate had a flaw

Something has happened

No more smilin' sweet song

Our world has ended

Maggie is gone

Chorus

fin

Dale Apartments in St. Paul, MN. I snapped a cell phone shot as I sat at the light outside Maggie's apartment building yesterday

Please don’t be sad. Death is a part of life. No one gets out alive. I accept this, and although I would have wanted it to be different and every one I ever knew to die of old age after me, that’s not the master plan for every living creature. I mark this day because it is just that, this day. Yesterday was Maggie's birthday, and like we would feel after a grand celebration, we feel everyday.

Margaret Ellen (Maggie) Spado

July 26, 1973 -- June 8, 1991

Peace to all