Local author takes on task of sharing daughter’s poetic journey through cancer

By Morgan M. Hurley | SDUN Assistant Editor

Established poet, author and theater critic Charlene Baldridge always expected her only daughter would one day publish Baldridge’s more personal writings posthumously. What Baldridge did not expect was the reverse: taking on the task of publishing her daughter’s work that way.

Laura Jeanne Morefield was an avid poet and writer in her own right, though she spent the majority of her career in banking, and then philanthropy. A graduate of Madison High School in Clairemont Mesa, she received a communications degree from Pepperdine University.

Married for almost 30 years, Morefield chose to travel extensively with her mother the last 10 years of her life. The two had just completed a cruise through the Baltics a few months prior to Morefield’s diagnosis.

She lived her life artfully and generously, always on the go, Baldridge said. In fact, when Morefield was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer in November 2008, she had triumphantly walked off an 18-hole golf course two days prior. A nagging pain in her side prompted her to finally visit a doctor, and for the next two and a half years, Morefield faced the most challenging battle of her life. Baldridge said she continued to play golf to the very end.

Morefield’s choice to document that battle was not a surprise to Baldridge, who had enjoyed a collaborative relationship with her daughter, sharing first-draft poetry readings with her for decades. What was a surprise to Baldridge, she said, was the day her daughter gave her an assignment.

In the preface to “The Warrior’s Stance” – Morefield’s recently released chapbook that Baldridge edited – Baldridge describes the assignment.

“In one of her last conversations with her mother … Laura, a lifelong poet, expressed the wish that her post-diagnosis poems be collected and made into a chapbook. She believed them to be her best. These, then, are but a few fruits of the warrior’s last years,” Baldridge wrote.

The first draft of Morefield’s work amounted to about two-dozen poems, all piecing together the difficult journey she had undertaken. Baldridge said she thought she was done, but soon her son-in-law alerted her to many more poems he found in various stages of completed prose while perusing Morefield’s personal journals.

Morefield’s husband hired someone to extract the poems from the journals, something Baldridge could have done but not without bearing witness to personal thoughts that she said she knew she would be better left without knowing.

Though the extraction amounted to 66 more poems that clearly fit the task at hand, Baldridge, after much thought and counsel, said she decided against using them out of respect to her daughter’s privacy. As a minor compromise, Baldridge pulled several fragments from the journals, and included a few other poems written throughout Morefield’s life to add context when needed.

Baldridge said she went through each poem, each fragment and each line of prose with “a fine-tooth comb,” to ensure the line breaks, punctuation and spelling were accurate.  The finished chapbook contains 39 poems, and was a “painstaking and emotional” task, Baldridge said, but something that makes her very proud.

“It was a wonderful thing to be with her through the work,” she said.

The title “The Warrior’s Stance” comes directly from two poems, a metaphor often assigned to those challenged with cancer. “Although definitely she was a pacifist and did not approve of that metaphor, she never found anything that applied better,” Baldridge said.

In a moment of serendipity during the editing process, Baldridge recalled that years before, she had a random encounter with a man who was homeless and felt the need to sketch him upon returning home. Decades later, now screen-printed on the cover of “The Warrior’s Stance” and dressed in Morefield’s favorite colors, that random sketch has finally reached its destiny.

Another unique and personal touch was the choice Baldridge made to use her daughter’s cursive – pulled directly from the journals – to adorn the borders of each page in the chapbook. Morefield preferred to write on graph-lined notebooks and the fine-lined boxes are evident between her handwriting along the borders.

As mother and confidant first, and now editor, Baldridge has carefully woven her daughter’s journey together in a dramatic arc, and added notes when needed to assist the reader with deeper insight into the work.

The work ends with a poem written by Morefield’s husband, which acts as a proper post-script as he uses similar style and prose.

The chapbook will come with a matching bookmark, and all the proceeds from the book will go to the Colon Cancer Alliance.

“By some miraculous, mysterious process, the book was completed by mother suffering eyestrain and too many trips back to the scans, hoping to decipher words, make out punctuation and hew to Laura’s intent as much as possible regarding line lengths, words, repetitions [and] dashes,” Baldridge said. “[The] big deal was did she really want ampersands, or should ‘and’ be spelled out? I’ll find out when I next see her.”

A publication party has been set for March 25 from 4 – 7 p.m. at ion theatre company, located at 3704 Sixth Ave. in Hillcrest. RSVP to Baldridge at [email protected]. To donate to the Colon Cancer Alliance in Morefield’s name, visit ccalliance.org/laura. For complete information on the book, visit thewarriorsstance.com.