I just finished the eulogy poem for my friend Sue’s father, Ellwood Henry. It focuses on his artistic self as well as his career in the Navy during the Korean War with even a touch of magic. In the middle of the poem, there is a poem-within-a-poem. The poem-within-a-poem was a depiction written by John Milton of a festive group of people near a haunted stream. I thought that was appropriate as the "haunted stream" was the border of North Korea and China at the Yalu, aka Amnok, River.
Ellwood left behind his beloved daughter Sue; his cat, Skippy; Sue’s brother Stephen "Slim" Henry, adopted daughter Kathy and grandchildren sired by Kathy. He also left behind my wife who always thought of him as her second father.
Ellwood died of pneumonia, but the worst part of it was that the staff at Ellwood’s nursing home never called Sue to tell her that he was taking a turn for the worst. The week before, Sue tried to encourage her father to take his medication, but he refused. Sue’s a nurse at a hospital in Rhode Island. Ellwood, a fan of ritzy restaurants, refused to eat as he normally did. Sue was very upset and cried profusely saying that she should have visited him last Friday, the day before his death.
Ellwood specialized in pointilism and graduated from an art institute in New Hampshire. Said art institute wanted to hire him in a position that would have changed his life forever had he taken it. He declined the position stating that he wanted to stay in Rhode Island to take care of his wife and young children. That’s sacrifice and familial dedication we don’t find too often now in the for-the-most-part Capitalist West where much greed and avaricious ambition led to the near-collapse of a world’s economy. Ellwood still worked his art and magic for all around him to see.
On a humourous note, Ellwood was doing some legerdemain at a Christmas party at Sue’s house. He then, to the guffaws of our friends family, said in a mystical voice, "I will now retrieve a quarter from my wife’s bra." For the sake of respect for Ellwood and his family (as I still see Ellwood as a spiritual force to be reckoned with as he definately had the creative sparks all fired up throughout his life) during this time of grief, I will not go into here what he did next. Use your imagination.
I chose to use the following quote from John Milton in the poem because I felt that it reflected Ellwood’s penchant for fancy restaurants and festive rabble-rousing that he may have made manifest during the horror that was the Korean War: "…Pomp, feast and revelry/With mask and antique pageantry/ Such as youthful poets dream/on Summer eves by haunted stream". The haunted stream being the Yalu, or Amnok, River which forms the Northern boundary between the Korean Peninsula and China.
In the poem, I included seven geographic features as Ellwood was a master cartographer for the Navy during the Korean War. The Yalu, or Amnok, River, the island of Jeju-do which, although belonging to South Korea, lies South of the Jeju Strait with the Yellow Sea to the West and Sea of Japan to the East; the Yellow Sea, itself; the city of Seogwipo, on the Souther coast of Jeju-do, and, of course, the dreaded 38th Parallel.
