ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 12, 1996 TAG: 9603120108
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Beth Macy
SOURCE: BETH MACY
The audience was with Shelly Wagner when she described the horror of July 26, 1984, the moment she stopped pushing her 5-year-old son on his tire swing and went into the kitchen for something - she can no longer remember what.
It was with her during the search as she watched police officers open the boxes in her house, the footlockers in the attic, the hamper in the bathroom.
``I told them you would never stay in a box,'' the poet read,
not with all the commotion.
You would have jumped out,
found your flashlight
and wanted to join in the search.
A Hollins College student wrapped her gray sweatshirt around her knees and hugged herself as she listened to Wagner describe life without Andrew for the past 11 years - sitting through movie credits just to see if someone named Andrew is listed, staring at the five indentations of his plaster-cast handprint
as though he were telling you
how old he would be when he died.
Other members of the Thursday night audience sat in the back of the half-empty room, as if to grieve more privately under the harsh auditorium lights. Volunteers from the Good Samaritan Hospice, a co-sponsor of the reading, came to hear how devastating losing a child can be.
There were friends of Hollins College junior Anne Harper, who was murdered at her home in Fairfax during last Thanksgiving break.
And surely there were a few mothers in the audience who related too well to Shelly Wagner's book, which she describes as ``an 85-page book with 47 poems in which every poem is about the same thing.
``And there could have been many more.''
``The Andrew Poems,'' published by the Texas Tech University Press in 1992, is about the grief a mother feels when she turns her back on her 5-year-old son for a moment - and moments later discovers that he has drowned in the river behind her Norfolk house.
It is every mother's worst nightmare, a book of inexplicable suffering and incalculable loss. Wagner pulls it off - not by explaining what it means to grieve, but by showing the images she's left with: a gorilla mask Andrew wore to the zoo, a pair of his shoes she regrets throwing away, a vision of the crabs telling her
how natural he looked,
how peaceful,
as though he were only
sleeping.
A self-taught writer who admits to always reading ``the short poems in a book first,'' Wagner considers herself more an expert on grief than poetry - though her work has been praised by critics and has appeared in some of the most high-brow of poetry journals.
``The ones who come, especially the ones who've read the book - what they find is that I'm not telling anything they don't already know,'' she said in an interview before the reading. ``What I want is for them to see a companion on these pages.''
She talks about a recent reading she gave in the Eastern Virginia town of Ivor, population 350. It was held at the town firehouse in honor of Ladies Appreciation Night. A third of the town showed up. In lieu of a fee, she was given a key to the town, crafted by the mayor in his backyard wood shop.
``And I thought, 'Andrew would love this - me reading in front of all these fire trucks,'...And I don't think he'd mind me reading at a women's college, either.''
As a tribute to Anne Harper, Wagner read one of the student's poems, called ``David Bishop has AIDS.'' The 49-year-old poet advised Harper's friends that only two words are appropriate when someone has just died: I'm sorry.
``Beyond that you're walking on risky ground,'' Wagner said.
Between poems, she spoke about grief slowly and methodically - the way a mother might explain the game of checkers to her 5-year-old son.
``Don't consider your friend's mother unapproachable,'' she said. ``Write down a memory of her daughter and send it - it doesn't matter when. It'll never be too late.''
For people new to grief, she recommended literature of the Holocaust and of the Vietnam War - two of the few subjects she found helpful herself. ``We live in a grief-free society,'' she said. ``With modern medicine, you'd think we'd have cured death.''
To people who have yet to experience the loss of a friend or relative, Wagner's advice was simple: Treat each moment together as if it could be your last. Never say good-bye without saying ``I love you.'' Forgive everything.
And finally, she said, ``It's up to you to love your child as much as I've loved Andrew.''
On the first anniversary of your death,
I went to the kitchen,
set the table with your Superman place mat
I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,
removed the crust as always
for a special occasion.
I cut it into quarters
and arranged the triangles
on your red plate.
I poured milk in your blue plastic
Crayola crayon mug,
put on its pointed top
with the hole in the tip for a straw.
I had no straws.
I don't buy them anymore.
Sitting next to your place,
I apologized for no straw.
I apologized for your death.
I apologized for not being there.
When I finished, I wiped my eyes with your napkin,
gave thanks,
ate the bread and drank the milk.
``Communion''
by Shelly Wagner
from ``The Andrew Poems''
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: headshot of Wagnerby CNB