The poet writes about our names
Each of us has a name
given by the moments in our lives and
Given by God
Jacob is renamed by God
and renames his son
Both renamings happen in a moment of
crisis
God gives Jacob a new name just as he’s about to
face
the danger of his brother’s wrath
Like parents who used to rename a sick child
to trick the angel of death from coming to
collect
Jacob, though, renames his son after the worst has already
occurred
in the moment of his deepest grief,
with which he doesn’t want his child to be branded
Too much trauma
passed between fathers and sons in this family already,
he must have thought
So he takes away the name of bitterness,
fallen from his dying wife’s lips,
and replaces it with a name of strength;
A name that will remind his son that he was born of love
and not born of pain
even though both are true
It is easy to name our pain
To name ourselves in relation to our pain
But when we carry our pain around with us it sinks
into our bones
and leeches toxins to our muscles and the DNA we
pass on
to our children
It can be harder to name our joys
especially in moments of
profound
grief
and bitterness
But Jacob shows us that we must
For the sake of being able to walk in the world
with heads held high,
with optimism and hope
And for the sake of those who come after us,
who will know us first by the names we leave behind
and only after that (if we’re lucky) by our stories
“Each of us has a name,”
the poet writes,
“Given by the sea and given by our death”
Name me for the sea
or after the mountain
or the flowers and the people
that I love
Don’t name me by my death
My death is only how the story ends