Articles About James Valentine Peake

Numerology of Grief (The Sixth Year)

24 January 2012

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer.”

-Albert Camus

Six is my favourite number. It is the number of years between my younger sister and me. It looks like the lovechild of zero and “C”. The only single digit that is divisible by two as well as three, it seems to encompass both even and odd with a swirling, round-bottomed equanimity.

This tadpole, half of a yin-yang symbol, is also the number for idealists. Six years ago today, I counted myself among them when our son was born. I was determined to be the ideal father to an ideal son. Three days, eight hours and forty minutes later, when the doctor pronounced him dead, that idealism shattered, not by twos and threes, but into innumerable pieces.
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By Robert Peake | Posted in Fatherhood, Grief Recovery, Life | Also tagged , | Comments (7)

How to Lie with Facebook

28 September 2011

“Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose.”

-Czeslaw Milosz

I have been previewing Facebook’s upcoming Timeline feature. It turns one’s profile into a scrapbook-style autobiography, arranging multimedia posts in a chronology from birth to present. It is part of a larger strategy to promote information sharing that has been intelligently criticized in general terms. But it was a specific moment in my exploration of Timeline that pulled me up short. Clicking on the small heart icon for “Relationships”, up popped a menu item for marking one’s timeline with “Lost a Loved One.”

Though we have memorialised our son in many ways, the thought of posting his photo on Facebook beneath the small flower icon to make it part of this music-video-all-about-me of a web application struck me as painfully absurd. He is deeply and irrevocably part of my life. But a biography is not a life, much less an online profile. We have become a society obsessed with crafting our image–so much so that we almost believe, and sometimes attempt to inhabit, these spun self-tales.

The antidote to the future we now inhabit, wherein everyone has their own Wikipedia page for fifteen minutes, is art. Mark Twain called biographies “the clothes and buttons of a man,” deciding, “the biography of the man himself cannot be written.” But something approaching what it feels like to be a man can come across in the literary arts, and especially poetry. Poetry is the anti-wiki, striving for truths that need no citation, encompassing contradictions rather than devolving into fact-slinging “flame wars.”

And so, when it is released next month, I will use Timeline. But for matters that transcend time, and excavate the inmost reality, I’m sticking with poems.

By Robert Peake | Posted in Grief Recovery, Insights, Life, Poetry, Technology | Also tagged | Comments (4)

Why I Write

11 March 2011

Unexpected things happen when you release a book of poems into the world. The opening poem of the collection, “Father-Son Conversation” ends with the line: “I will go on speaking to you as long as I live.” Many people have written to me to say that they paused after reading this final line, sometimes for several days, before continuing on to the other poems in this collection. To me, that was both an unexpected and understandable response.

I have my own relationship with each of these poems. The first poem in this collection tells a lot about the purpose I have found in writing poetry. That is why I put it first. The Scottish poet Andrew Philip, who also lost his first-born son, says near the end of his poem “Lullaby,” “this is the man you fathered.” Indeed, my experience with the birth and death of our son James was an initiation into fatherhood–that I was “fathered” by him, just as one might be “knighted” by a sovereign. I came away with a charge.

But how to fulfill the charge of fatherhood without a child of one’s own? Continue Reading “Why I Write” »

By Robert Peake | Posted in Fatherhood, Grief Recovery, Insights, Life, Poetry | Also tagged , | Comments (5)

The Fifth Year

23 January 2011

The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly. (Proverbs 20:27, KJV)

Two days ago, our next-door neighbors marked the birthday of the adult son they outlived. Yesterday, my wife’s childhood friend commemorated what would have been her son’s Bar Mitzvah. I feel for them deeply. And tomorrow, had he lived more than three days, our own son would have turned five.

It is a significant age in our culture–the beginning of more than a decade of compulsory education, and also therefore the end of the need for full-time care. It is when most parents place their child at the top of a long chute ending in adulthood, by taking them nervously in hand to their first day of kindergarten.

Late last year, in response to a wave of teenage suicides, the It Gets Better project reached out to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans-gender (LGBT) teens with its simple message of encouragement. After five years of complicated grief, I am here to say it can get better for bereaved parents, too. I say “can” because I credit not only time but a number of important activities for bringing me increased solace, including: community service, counseling, meditation, nutrition, exercise, supportive friends, and, of course, writing. While all of this has helped, both in the moment and over time, it has not been some steady upward progression. Far from it. Some days, just getting out of bed in the morning is still my greatest victory.
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By Robert Peake | Posted in Fatherhood, Grief Recovery, Life, Poetry | Comments (7)

An Unexpected Dedication

12 February 2010
Robert Peake reads a poem next to "Elliot" the bear

Photo by Randy Graham

I broke away from work to attend the dedication ceremony for my neighbor Mark Benkert’s new memorial sculpture to the Aliso Street Bear (a.k.a “Elliot”). In introducing me to read the poem I wrote dedicated to the bear, Mark also mentioned something remarkable about the process of sculpting the memorial.

For both Mark and I, the loss of the bear resonated deeply with the loss of our sons. As Mark was inscribing the letters “J” and “B”, the initials of his son, Jonah Benkert, the “B” also read much like a “P”–and he mentioned that “J.P.” reminded him of our own son, James Peake. Needless to say that by the time I took the microphone, I was nearly unable to speak.

Yet I managed to read my poem, honoring the bear, our sons, our community. The rest of the dedication meant a lot to me–from written poems and prose pieces, to impromptu verbal tributes, a song, and drumming. It was also a moment of catharsis for our community, coming together once more to honor all that the bear brought to us.

To learn more about how to promote the peaceful coexistence of humans and animals in the Ojai Valley, please visit the Ojai Wildlife League website.

By Robert Peake | Posted in Community, Grief Recovery, Life, Poetry, Readings | Also tagged , , | Comments (3)

The Fourth Year

24 January 2010

Our son, James, was born four years ago today. His brief life changed mine inexplicably. Since that time, I completed a Doctorate in Spiritual Science, and an MFA in writing poetry, since spiritual practice and poetic expression are two oars by which I navigate the underground waters of grief.

And looking back on the first, second, and third anniversary, I see a clear trajectory toward healing, and toward integrating this profound experience into my life–not as a tragedy–but as a source of strength. I recently found the courage to hold a baby in my arms again, and felt, in that moment, only joy. I have also discovered more of the blessings, strange as it sounds, of the complicated nature of grief.

This experience reaffirmed a few things for me: that art can make life meaningful, that compassion is always the most appropriate response, and that my wife is still the bravest woman I have ever met. Today, I say, once again: godspeed, my son. And thank you.

By Robert Peake | Posted in Fatherhood, Grief Recovery, Life | Comments (7)