Buried alive

dark, dark poetry, poems, poetry, Uncategorized, , ,

A plane crashed
between Sweden and Finland –
where were the survivors buried?
You may have seen this question
in a spoof IQ test
– as did I, aged thirteen –
and if
you have been paying attention
– as was I, at thirteen –
I expect you will reply
“You don’t bury survivors”
because
you don’t realise
-and at the tender age of thirteen
neither did I-
sometimes
the strongest survivors
are those
who get buried alive.

©Jane Paterson Basil

73 thoughts on “Buried alive”

    1. Who me? Wht would i want to waste the energy digging myself out when I hav ethe police to do it for me. THEY’VE ARRESTED PAUL FOR SHOPLIFTING and locked him up. He’ll go to court in the morning, and he’s going to deny the whole thing, but idon’t think he has a chance. His probation officer will have to send him back to prison. I feel like dancing – isn’t that horrible?

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              1. Yes, I always insist on questions like “how are you?” “how’s the weather?” “Happy whatever-day” before demands like “why didn’t you answer the phone?”
                “where’s my Mom?” “I need….” 🙂

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                1. That’s very wise – I’ll have to follow your example, except I’ve told my son that the next time he asks me for something (after he comes out of prison) I’m going to get out an injuction on him, and I mean it.
                  The worm has turned!

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                    2. well I like to think a call is because they really want to talk to me…”how are you Grama, how’s the cat? Are you writing? Baked any yummy cookies?” THEN sock it to me with the I want, I need, gimme, why? Just a bit of courtesy is all I ask. I refuse to blame myself for something someone else did! 🙂

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                    3. My grandchildren are lovely – and they never scrounge off me, but my son only thinks of himself, so even if he asked all the right questions he would only be doing it because he wanted something and thought that was the best wasy to get it.

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                    5. He sounds like my eldest grandson, who’s nineteen, and very good company until he starts ranting about one of his pet subjects – but my family arre all a bit obsessive 🙂

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                    8. my mother didn’t like it when I would make comments about news events or whatever, saying I didn’t know what I was talking about. I make it a point to never say that to a child.

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                    9. I’ve just found a couple of your comments in my spam folder – this is one of them. Looks like WP is losing the plot – it’s happening all over the place.
                      I was married to a man who told me I didn’t know what I was talking about whenever he backed himself into a corner by talking nonsense.

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                    10. I have had a few comments in my spam too, yahoo that is. dam bots! don’t know if its WP or yahoo. my first husband’s thing was to say “who would hire YOU!” 🙂

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                    11. Most of my genuine spam on WP is coming from bing – but I’m on Yahoo. Everything that’s going wrong for me seems to be connected with WP.
                      Your first husband sounds like a charmer…

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                    12. no…he wasn’t…he was a rude jerk (among other things.) It was my second husband who was a sweetie. Although in his eulogy one of the firefighters commented on a remark by one of the hospital nurses… “I’ve heard him called a lot of things, but Sweetie wasn’t one of them.”

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                    13. I forgot – you don’t do sarcasm in the US – I didn’t nean it when I suggested husband No. 1 was a charmer.
                      So was your second husband a firefighter?

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                    14. yes, he was fire chief here in town, one of the perks I got when I became newspaper reporter back in about 1970. Yes, we do sarcasm…but with care, sometimes I say something I don’t mean. When in England a few years ago I said I was “miserable” which meant from jet-lag and digestive issues…she took it to mean I was bored and not having a good time, which was FAR from truth.
                      fortunately we came to “get” my meaning. 🙂

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                    15. There are so many subtle differences between our languages – some of them are hilarious, but I can’t think what any of them are at the moment 🙂

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                    16. once on a long taxi ride I thought the young driver was coming onto me…didn’t know what to do, out in middle of nowhere. Finally figured out he was asking if I had any candy…I thought he was asking for a kiss. LOL

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                    18. that would have been awful! No I just started talking about the taxi service…It wasn’t too long before I figured it out and just went on chatting along in my poor Spanish. It was beyond me how a good looking young guy would be flirting with an old bag like me. LOL

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                    19. Oh! You were in Soain – I thought you were in the UK. We call candy sweets, and I was trying to figure out how you mistook ‘sweets’ for ‘kiss.’ LOL
                      Old bag? When I talk about myelf in that way I get told off, so perhaps I should tell you off 🙂

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                    20. Mexico. I just was chatting with you when I said old bag…I hate thinking of myself as old…my doctor says I’m NOT old! I told him its his job to make sure I make it to 90.

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                    21. Only 90?
                      I had a sudden irreverent image of you, 140 years old, walking down the road with bits dropping off you – your knee, your left hip – while the doctor runs along behind you picking them up and glueing them back on.
                      I’m a bad person 😀 😀

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                    22. I’m going to tell my doc you said that! I was in going on and on as I do and told him he has to keep me alive at least another ten years. Next month I’ll be 82, but I have to try to keep that in mind because I forget. 🙂

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                    23. It’s strange the way time goes. I remember the freedom of running through fields and playing through the long school holidays, knowing that adulthood followed childhood, and yet thinking it was a million miles away. Although it arrived many years ago, on some level I’m still waiting for it to happen – to get that ‘eureka’ moment – to have some kind of sudden clarity…

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                    28. we moved around a lot with the Army. Traveled to Mexico a LOT…ran around the US visiting my son and family who moved around a lot. My husband and I did quite a bit of traveling after he retired…to Canada, Mexico, once to Spain & Portugal, and I went to England. I traveled a lot by myself, too. Now that I am out of discretionary funds I don’t go far.

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                    34. my kids all raised various Hell, and I tried to just roll with it…worked for me. Never got a Mother of the Year Award…but my granddaughter said I was the coolest person she knows. I’ll take that! 🙂

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                    38. my daughter is retiring from the hospital where she is a nurse after 30 years. She told me she might sign on with a NGO like Doctors-without-borders…I wish she would…give her something interesting and fulfilling to do.

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                    40. there isn’t, but I’m sure she will find some reason why she can’t do it. When I was her age I was on reality tours down in the jungles…my soninlaw forbade me to go… LOL you know what I told him. My husband didn’t mind, though he would meet me in some “civilized” city as he didn’t consider guys with machine guns his idea of “fun.”

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                    44. I did buy oatmeal in a German shop once…to make cookies…I didn’t know the German word, but a helpful customer told me…its haferflocken…just so ya know! 🙂 I was an army wife back in the day, thus the cookie baking housewifey stuff.

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                    45. Haferflocken – I’m one of those rare people who loves the German language, and that word is great.
                      Why is it that army wives do so much baking? Is it because they’re trapped in an army camp with not much else to do? Is it that soldiers expect it? Are they particularly patriarchal, or are their wives keen to please ? I’ve never thought about it before, but now I’m curious.
                      I used to bake a lot – it was the way I was brought up, and the way I liked to do things.

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                    46. I think it has to do with living in various places. When we were in Gemany in the 1950s Army wives generally didn’t work because jobs went to the locals. I don’t know as they baked a lot….I did, even baked bread for years…but I was a new wife and baking was something I could do fairly well. We shopped at the the commissary on the base (or near) but bought also on the German economy. Beer delivered to our quarters, lovely, lovely fresh rolls delivered every day…the military ws pretty well self-contained.

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                    47. I know a few people who served in Germany, and their children all said that the army schools were far better than our schools over here, and that they had more of a sense of belonging at the army bases.
                      It doesn’t say a lot for life in the UK.

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                    48. maybe self-containment because of the language differential? I was in Germany right after WWII, and few of us army people spoke any German. I didn’t have any kids yet, so no experience with schools.

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      3. No, that’s God’s Grace… Now just breathe. I hope they send him back. This way the judgement isn’t being meted out by you. Have you thought about getting a restraining order for him in case he gets out of it somehow?

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        1. I considered a restraining order some weeks back, but then forgot all about it – that’s what all this stress does to me, confuses me and makes me lethargic and forgetful. Thanks for the reminder.

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  3. Sorry Jane. That is so weird. I was the first to comment and did so before your update. I was agreeing with your incredible insight as to the strongest being buried alive. It is not horrible that you feel a weight lifting. Not in the least.

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  4. I can’t remove the yes. If you want to in-approve I understand, or leave it. It doesn’t matter. Just know that I wasn’t for a minute saying you are horrible. I can relate to everything you are feeling.

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    1. I’ll leave it – it made me laugh, because I knew it was there before I added my response to Calen’s comment.
      Maybe there’s something wrong with my sense of humour.
      Rest assured I understand, and am very grateful for your support xox

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    2. I really do get it.. the upside, if there is one…is that at least you can know where he is. That can be an enormous relif…I know.:-)
      .
      as for commments, they are seldom in order…in fact I thought your yeswas in agreement Soul Gifts. 🙂

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