As a writer and English teacher I’m always looking for signs.
I went back to yoga last week and on the inspirational quote board someone had written:
“Remember me.”
~ Your body
It was an apt point, without question. It’s also what the ghost of Hamlet’s father said to him at the end of their first meeting. It was if that quote was there just for me. Not only to remind me to start exercising and eating more discriminantly again, but to remember my Dad. And Hamlet. And the work I want to do to share his story.
Today is my father’s birthday.
He would be 82. At the end of this month it will be 5 years since he died.
I’ve written more than five versions of Teaching Hamlet as My Father Died in these past five years, and one of the many things I learned during my preoccupation with dying, death, and grief is that REMEMBERING plays an essential role. Here’s an excerpt from my memoir; a classroom scene discussing Hamlet’s first visit with his dead dad.
~ ~ ~
“Folks, please notice that remembering is a prevalent motif in this play obsessed with death. At the end of their first visitation, the Ghost of Hamlet’s father implores Hamlet Remember me! It seems an extraneous request. Hamlet is already preoccupied with his dead dad and his mother’s o’er hasty marriage before the Ghost materializes. Now his father’s ghost has regaled him with tales of such villainous horror that, of course, Hamlet will think of nothing else. Duh, Dad.” A few chuckles.
I continued, “And just think how unfortunate it is that Hamlet is not permitted to go back to school or resume his normal life. He’s trapped in the prison of his mind, haunted by bad dreams of his uncle Claudius’ pernicious deeds. Remember thee! Hamlet cries out twice to the departed spirit, from this time forward he’ll think of nothing else. Let’s read it.”
Remember thee!
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
in this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory
I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix’d with baser matter: yes, by heaven!
O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables,
“My tables refers to what we’d think of as a tablet of paper and meet means apt or fitting,” I explained, miming writing something down in a book. “Meet it is I set it down, mean I should write or note this down. Keep it in mind. Okay, go back to My tables.
–meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark:
[He writes]
So, uncle, there you are.
~ ~ ~
And meet it is I set it down. Death is a fact of life. People’s loved ones die every day.
Thou knowest ‘tis common, all that lives must die.
Your father lost a father. That father lost, lost his.
And yet. And yet….
#deaddadstories #hamlet #ghostdads #deathteacheslife #griefteacheslove #teachinghamletasmyfatherdied #teachinghamlet