Trains as a metaphor

[Overmod]

Murphy Siding

     A couple weeks back, we had to move my wife's mother from a memory care, nursing home unit to hospice care.  Last night, as I was driving home from there with one of my sons, he summed up Grandma Margie's current situation.   We know where she's going.  She knows where she's going.  Everybody's OK with that.  It's like her bags are packed, she's at the depot, and we're just waiting on the train.

     Pretty deep thoughts for a teenager.  It made me think of all the other train metaphors in our lives.

And in this context, Freud's observation of what a train meant to his patients ...

A related sentiment is Tom Rush's compilation of train songs, Panama Limited (listen to the original, not a later performance.  All the story of hearbreak and separation and loss ... and none of it has actually happened at the moment the train, and the song, stop.

Or Terence Martin's Sleeper on a Westbound Train.

[tree68]

Read that in a creative writing class.  To save folks the research, Boanerges was a race horse of the day.

[John WR]

The Railway Train

I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step

Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare

To fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill

And neigh like Boanerges; 
Then, punctual as a star, 
Stop--docile and omnipotent--
At its own stable door.

  --Emily Dickinson

[eagle1030]

i've read part of that at a time.  This line:

Firelock76

And there is the headlight, shining far down the track, glinting off the steel rails that, like parallel lines, will meet in infinity, which after all is where this train is going.  

is probably the greatest rail-related sentence ever.  Always reminds me about why I love trains.

[Firelock76]

Very, VERY profound for a teenager indeed.  The late journalist and dean of Civil War historians Bruce Catton called what you're waiting for "The Night Train."   Allow me to  quote him:

"You know how it can be, waiting at the junction for the Night Train.  You have seen all the sights, and it is a little too dark to see any more even if you did miss some, and the waiting room is uncomfortable and the time of waiting is dreary, long-drawn, with a wind from the cold north whipping curls of fog past the green lamps on the switch stands.  Finally, far away yet not so far really, the train can be heard;  the doctor  (or station agent)  hears it first, but finally you hear it yourself and you go to the platform to get on.  And there is the headlight, shining far down the track, glinting off the steel rails that, like parallel lines, will meet in infinity, which after all is where this train is going.  And there by the steps of the sleeping car is the Pullman conductor, checking off his list.  He has your reservation, and he tells you your berth is all ready for you.  And then, he adds the final assurance as you go down the aisle to the curtained bed:          'I'll call you in plenty of time in the morning.'      In the morning."

Isn't that something?  I choke up every time I read it.  My best wishes to all of you.

PS:  I don't know about you but if the Night Train doesn't have a steam engine on the head end I'm NOT getting on!

[selector]

I tried to think of something that would include a high ball, Norris, but that signal would not be a welcome one for your wife.  For your Mother-in-Law, though, it might be very welcome.  There are those of us who must remain on the platform and wave our good-byes.

Please tell your wife we are thinking of her, and that we wish her well.

Crandell

[John WR]

You are right, Murphy.  What your son said is profound, especially for a young man in his teens.  I wish you and your family well as you all deal with this sad event in your lives.  

John

[Murphy Siding]

     A couple weeks back, we had to move my wife's mother from a memory care, nursing home unit to hospice care.  Last night, as I was driving home from there with one of my sons, he summed up Grandma Margie's current situation.   We know where she's going.  She knows where she's going.  Everybody's OK with that.  It's like her bags are packed, she's at the depot, and we're just waiting on the train.

     Pretty deep thoughts for a teenager.  It made me think of all the other train mephors in our lives.