Dorothy Hodel: Poems, a Letter, Last Will and Testament

April 16, 2026
Birch Bay, Washington

(For those who missed it, my previous post on Dorothy, A Poem to an Unborn Child,  can be found HERE.)

Several readers have asked for more about my mother, Dorothy. What follows are a few pieces found among her papers—written at different times in her life.

Taken together, they show something of who she was.

From a private poem — 1975 (her 67th year)

To grow old
To lose the magic of lover’s nights
Not to wish to recall them even—
How many! How bittersweet!
To wince away from old scars
Refusing even memory of sensation
Re-kindling of ancient pain-sweet fires
Wanting peace now—
No feeling to ruffle precarious peace
So hard won—so easily overthrown

Not to remember—
Refuse the nights—
Refuse now the sight of lover’s faces
In evening dark—
The swift knife in the dark of lover’s kissing
Awakening what I want forgotten

As I search my way to oblivion
In this my 67th year
Trying to ease the threshold
Between life and not-life
Easing—the coward’s way—
And how I welcome cowardice!

Close eyes—close ears—close memory—
Think only of the dark bridge ahead
Think only it is easier to die
If living is forgotten—

— Dorothy Jean Hodel

From a letter to me on my 33rd birthday — 1974

Dearest Steven:

How does one write to a son one loves, admires, venerates so completely that the only thing that sums it up would be to say: I dreamed a perfect son and you turned out to be that son in every way—and even more?

Words are tired things and through reiteration seem to lose force and meaning. Fortunately, the emotion behind the words does not.

Perhaps I should devote my remaining years to creating a new language which would convey strong emotions freshly and effectively. Or perhaps like birds and animals we should go back to chirps and growls and grunts.

Or perhaps—lovely thought!—we could develop a coloration process, like some mating animals, so that looking at you and saying “love” I should glow in a rainbow of colors.

So, since my pigmentation isn’t up to it, see me now in your mind’s eye with a glowing purple beak, bright green hair, and red, blue and orange arranged in a gorgeous chromatic pattern saying “Love” in a way as fresh and new as a rainbow.

Spectroscopically,
Mother

From my remarks at her memorial — March 1982, Los Angeles

Eulogies for the most part are well-intended distortions which glorify a part while ignoring the wholeness of our existence.

Each of us here present possesses our individual and private thoughts which comprise our understanding of what you were in life. This is personal and should remain so.

What can be recognized and shared are the influences which you gave to your sons and friends.

Independence, originality, and romantic intellectualism pervaded your life and were your sphere of influence.

Whitman, Joyce, Rachmaninoff—always the thinker outside, the lover inside. (Except when you reversed the two.)

Your love of nature was most pronounced. You lived life passionately and poetically. You saw and looked for the natural beauty in man and his universe.

Life was a dance, a poem—a sonnet of the sexes—a mating rite between pain and pleasure, good and evil.

You were never religious in the traditional sense, but ever conscious of the perfect order hidden in rock, river, star and flower. These were your angels and your heaven.

At your request, your body was cremated and your ashes returned to nature—beneath a flowering Japanese Magnolia tree.

Let that tree be a symbol of your immortality.

From her handwritten “Last Will and Testament” — December 24, 1975

(Four months before her death, at a family Christmas gathering, she read this aloud to her three sons.)

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

I, Dorothy Hodel, a resident of Santa Monica, California declare this to be my last Will and revoke all other Wills previously made by me:

Because I am the wealthiest woman in the world and because my wealth carries with it great responsibilities and because I have three beloved sons, therefore, I have decided to distribute this wealth during my lifetime, in a fair and equitable manner, so that I may see my sons and their wives and heirs and companions possess in enjoyment those things they themselves have chosen: To wit:

To Michael and Terry:

I give the heavens and all its contents; sun, moon, stars and planets and galaxies, and all the air and ether in between, including the sound waves which have already made their voices familiar to the farthest galaxies. In token of these possessions I now give them a blueprint of the moon, and a deed to one acre upon it, from which vantage point they may wish to direct their empire, wisely, I hope, and well, with kindness and generosity to all the personae they have created and peopled it with.

To Steven and Marsha:

I give the sea and all its creatures and plants, including mermaids, gods and goddesses, and not forgetting that primordial ooze from whence we all come. In token of these of whose existence you have always been aware and therefore are yourself a compound of poet and scientist, this shell, cast up by Aphrodite and holding her voice within (Beware!); this transparent ship filled with sea-water; and this recording of the voices of your kingdom. Rule it well. The beginning of everything is there.

To Kelly and Jan:

I give the whole earth and all the lovely living things upon and in and over it, smallest to largest. In token of which this small redwood cone; the world itself in miniature and this recording of the heartbeat of love which is your heartbeat.

Mother

I appoint The Man in the Moon, Ra, Neptune and Ceres, as Executrices of this will.

This will was signed by me on the 24th day of December 1975 at Santa Monica, California.

Dorothy Hodel

Dorothy, Steven (standing on rail), brother Kelvin newborn 1942

Dorothy 1946 (photo taken by our father, George Hodel)

Dorothy, 1944- ( photo by Man Ray)