Anniversary

She sits two feet away

And regrets that she cannot kiss him.

One day - perhaps you’ll recognize it,

Or just as likely not -

There will be a final darkened milkweed pod,

Burst and letting its seeds take the wind.

Death is an indoor matter

(Almost always)

Happening in beds that are not close enough to windows

Nor to the ones we love most.

The last slips in the door before it’s bidden.

Dirge Without Music

 By Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.  Crowned

With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.

Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.

A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,

A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—

They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled

Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do not approve.

More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.

In Time

The first day of autumn here was sometime in early September. It had been a mild week, but the breezes still carried summer’s lazy humidity tinged with heat, right up until one Thursday morning when the 65 of the beautiful evening before had been transformed into a chillier 65 that threatened to bite. Ordinarily that might be cause for celebration: October is usually jam packed with fun events, the warming spices and knitting come out again, Christmastime is on the horizon, and I begin my annual determined few weeks of seeing all of my good friends one-on-one for coffee or drinks, which is how I’ve taken to celebrating my own birthday as a boring ass adult. But as the sun rose on that morning, it felt like one more death than I had left in me to handle. 

Jo March is the Gryffindor of Little Women: everyone thinks that’s who they’d be, at least initially. But I always identified more with Beth. Not the melodramatic dying bit - thankfully I’m in excellent health - but the grief on Claire Danes’s face when she asks, “Why does everyone want to go away?” On grayer days, that’s the frame for my world: there was a moment that I didn’t know was perfect until slowly its components slipped away one by one. First, my sisters moving to Seattle one after the other, and somewhere in there, my parents selling the childhood home and moving several states away too. Then losing a beloved roommate to work in yet another state. My boyfriend moving around the region, following post-doctoral work 2-5 hours away. The severings of COVID, which were more ambiguous but felt the more intensely for introducing physical isolation. Bear limping to me as I opened my front door coming back from a long weekend, and six weeks later she was dead. Moving, at long last, because everyone else close to me had except Gwen, and more partings. Mom fighting cancer but not understanding the terms of the engagement and losing. Without her Dad not knowing how to want his own future, and he too has come close to slipping out of our hands.

I feel a little bit like I’m dying too. Again, not in that Beth way, but in one of the transformations we undergo at moments in our lives when the many adaptations we’ve made to survive begin to produce deeper changes. How do I perceive myself? What are my goals? What doors are being locked and unlocked at this moment? Being fully in one place for the first time in so long - no weekend trips to see Pierce, no weekly commutes to New York City for work, old ties weakening, new ties being formed - I don’t feel as good as I expected. It was exhausting to maintain at times, but cloistered here entirely I feel stifled and forgotten. Like stars being birthed in a cloudy nebula there are pinpricks of light: a spontaneous adventure, a new friend, a novel that soothes and then scalds, the pungent kicks of garlic and cumin and miso and chili oil.

It will be months til the darkness is turned back at the solstice. Little wonder that we’ve arranged several holidays to fall in that period when we most need the comfort and consolation of other people’s company. And perhaps I shall draw the shadows around me like a blanket, and use the months of gathering gloom to conceive, like my father, of what a future without the past self I inhabited so fully might look like.

Hospice

I am not doing any of these things perfectly. I may not even be doing them well. But dwelling on my shortcomings feels too selfish of a preoccupation in this moment, and an intolerable preoccupation at that. There is no more time to prepare: what could even be done to remedy it? 

And so things are as they are, and the resources I have are what I have to work with. When everything I encounter takes the form of an unrelenting, unbearable headwind, how do I stand in it and not be knocked over?

The word "gracious" comes to mind. The wind rises, the slender reeds shiver and flex and rise again with its falling. To not be perfect amid difficulty but to choose grace, from moment to moment. 

And this is not a moment to react with defensiveness or anger or frustration or disappointment, though they're close to the surface as the pressure is applied. There is no time for these things, because in one universe, time is ending. A life that one person still desires with a fierce desire, that she is not resigned to giving up: but she does not desire pain. Moment to moment, seek grace.

Anchor

By the window, where the light pours in, we have joy. The myriad comforts of everyday life or even the extraordinary pleasures that come to us rarely and are delightful for their unusual unfamiliarity. I cherish the sensation of washed linen against my skin. I laugh at a cheeky text from my boyfriend. I celebrate the prospect of new friendships or the success of a new venture. I enjoy the satisfaction of re-experiencing what I have been able to accomplish with my hands and simple materials as I wrap myself in a beautiful shawl. I savor new tastes and textures at a pleasant dinner with friends. Both the present and the future feel bright.

On the opposite side of the room where the shadows find space to gather, we have sorrow. Rooted in what has happened, what is happening, what we know or fear will soon come. As parents grow older and their medical diagnoses multiply and become scarier, as other loved ones confront unexpected health challenges, as I grieve the loss of a beloved pet, as personal ambitions meet frustration at every turn and fears of financial insecurity loom like a dark cloud on the horizon, as isolation creeps up slowly and darkens the already dark nights. Were we to number them, they might overwhelm us. To repeat their litany, fingering each bead as it passes along the string and being confronted by its hard reality, would be a slow descent into anxiety and melancholy.

At every moment, these are with us. Some retreat into the background, while others take their place. Time lessens the sting of old wounds, time inflicts new ones. How do we choose for ourselves the path that we will walk in mind and in heart? To focus on only joy would be naive and even selfish in its ignorance. To focus only on grief would be a kind of claustrophobic shutting out of the light and reducing space to its smallest dimensions, a different kind of naivete - nihilism - that shuts its eyes to all that's good and beautiful. If I see my joy through my pain, if I see my pain through my joy, what will I find in this strange and wonderful life? I hope the strength to endure and the tenderness to love despite it all, and the wisdom to meet each day as it comes with patience rather than fear.