Terri Radcliffe Hunziker and I went to high school together and managed to keep in touch through the twenty something years that have followed. She was the last one we ever thought would go first. It was non-smoker lung cancer, that mysterious disease that’s creeping into the lives of more and more people, that took her on July 4, 2008. It was her Independence Day after almost five years of fighting. The doctors had originally given her six months.
You can read more about her and all she did to try to extend her life and raise her kids at www.mybumpintheroad.com. She, in her quiet way, was a doer.
I found out after she was gone that she had asked for me to read at her memorial–a reading of my choice. I couldn’t find anything that truly captured her spirit, so I dared to write my own. It’s called “Pieces,” and it was inspired by David Wagoner’s poem “Going Back to the Sea.” It’s a story from the heart—bad freeform random poetry at worst, a hopeful monologue at best. I’m posting it here for everyone who was lucky enough to know or even hear of Terri. She touched the lives of many.
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Pieces: A Letter To Terri
Dear Ter,
You’ve left us in pieces. Shattered like colored glass on hard cold marble.
Our worlds hung suspended when you left,
Until the knowledge of what was coming
Clashed with the disbelief that it had actually arrived.
And then all the glass bubbles of hope we’d
launched day after day, treatment after treatment
came crashing, crashing
Crashing to Earth.
And now, Ter, as I stand amidst this
Kaleidescope of your life, I have some questions for you.
Questions about you and about stuff you should know now
That you didn’t know when you were here.
For example, why when my poetry teacher sent a poem to me
For you called “Going Back to the Sea”
why did it bring me to tears for the rest of the afternoon?
Why? Was it the beginning?
“It will seem strange at first
going back under water,
but soon your difficult breathing
will feel like a birthright,
and you’ll settle down
to a more buoyant life
where each step and each touch
will be an easy impulse
to give in to. Your body
will discover old proportions….”
Was it the poem’s title and the recollections it inspired of pilgrimages
we all made to Cannon Beach? That place where the
sand stretches endlessly, the pizza is fresh, seabirds swirl,
and the waves roll far offshore, white against gray.
Or was it because we had all wanted your lungs to clear
And your breathing to be easy? And you to be well.
Why did that poem bring on such stinging tears?
Maybe it was the middle.
“…In place of speech,
you’ll have your exclusive silence.
Now the dissolution of shadows
and the scattering of the sun
into ribbons and broken crescents
will show what swims around you —
diatoms, plankton, the suspense
of colloidial particles—
and will blur your vision
momentarily
into the visionary….”
You, Ter, were our science visionary,
With bits of wisdom and humor dancing in the ether.
My favorites, as I’m sure you’d guess, are the
“Weird & Wacky Science Facts” from the Terimore Institute.
Like this one…
“A giraffe can go without water longer than a camel can. Next time I have to cross the Sahara desert, I will be certain to go by giraffe.”
And this one….
“Crocodiles and alligators are surprisingly fast on land. Although they are rapid, they are not agile; so if you ever find yourself chased by one, run in a zigzag line. If this doesn’t work, the management is not responsible.”
A crocodile passed through the front entry
The night Shan and I stayed with you.
You weren’t afraid and we didn’t have to run in a
Zig zag line. Instead, you watched it go by
with an Audubon eye
and then slept. You made me brave.
What’s it like, where you are?
I imagine it’s a place of possibilities
Like the poem’s near end…
“…If you go back
to glare and the wind, if you flounder
ashore on the sand and lift
your shape on surprising legs
and finally stand once more….”
I know it frustrated you no end
Those last weeks, not being able to stand on your own.
But when we watched that last movie Blue Crush.
We dreamed up lives as hot, strong surfer chicks.
What it must feel like to stand on a board
And ride those waves…
Maybe now you know.
Have you found your footing in another world,
While we all struggle to find ours in this?
Dang, girl. You left us all in pieces.
You were supposed to be our miracle.
But you left us all in pieces—a quivering
mass of molecules,
atoms, dancing particles of light.
Elements on the periodic table.
Electrical impulses.
Mysteries of life.
What wisdom can you share with us now?
Maybe it’s this truth,
Channeled from you through me, to this room
Where we’re meant to remember and say good-bye.
But we can’t fully let you go
because now we know this one true thing…
You were made up of pieces of us, and we are made
Of pieces of you. Memories, touches, smiles,
even those people
You never met, hoping and praying
for your miracle—our miracle.
That we all thought would come.
But maybe, just maybe YOU are our miracle.
Left for us in tiny pieces.
In us.
Those little ways you
Entered our lives that help us to remember
and to know you in ways you were
too humble to reveal.
You think we think you’re gone? Ha!
Ter, we can find you in a grain of sand.
We can find you in the lines on our hands
We can even find you in Bryson’s green eggs and ham.
I suppose one day we will let you go, but only
Because you left us pieces.
Pieces of bravery,
Of intelligence
Of determination
Of laughter,
Of kindness.
Pieces. Because of those we will remember.
Because of those we will all find a beginning in a poem’s end.
“You’ll find what’s left of yourself
sinking slowly, easily,
into a half-sleep once more.”
But we know you aren’t sleeping.
We know that you’re astride a giraffe galloping across
The Sahara. That you’ll Go Back to the Sea, with an
Evolutionary flair, swimming with the birds and the fishes
In your favorite Saint’s care.
We know you’re everywhere—
“in the scattering of the sun
into ribbons and broken crescents…
that will show what swims around us—
diatoms, plankton, the suspense of colloidial particles…”
All blurring our vision momentarily, into the visionary.
Thanks Ter, for sharing pieces of you with all of us.
Written by Stephanie Lile for
Terri Radcliffe Hunziker –December 26, 1962- July 4, 2008–
Inspired by ”Going Back to the Sea” a poem by David Wagoner.
Memorial Service July 10, 2008
