Beneath the wet pavement
Beneath the warming
the newborn bumblebees
not yet risen
Beneath the dog shit and the mud slush
the brown leaves splayed with stars of fungus
the unfurled things
unnameable things
still and white and huddled
reaching to be carried up
Crawl down beneath the rot
Bring me home
the time is hot
To all travelers once seen and loved:
Hold on to me as you would the ground beneath your feet
Be at peace
and leave me no legacy but this:
Be at peace
and leave me no legacy but this:
My body in the earth
The earth in my body
******************************************************************************
I can't believe that it's 2017 and you died in 2004. I'm surprised we don't have flying cars by now! Someone should talk to Michael J. Fox about that. Though we do have hover boards, so I guess he's done his part. What else? Hillary ran for president twice, and no one thought it was that big a deal the second time. Though she did lose and we elected a mad hatter and misogynist, so I'm not sure that's progress. Flat screen TVs got really light and pretty cheap. iPhones became ubiquitous and had their ten year anniversary. Businesses might be realizing that people actually enjoy talking to people, so that annoying trend of stores never having staff on hand to actually assist might be ending.
I was reading one of my earlier posts today, thinking about the way I was back then, happy and carefree and falling in love. I was worried about you of course, writing dark poetry and music about death, living with your illness as a constant shadow in the periphery of my life, yet somehow I was still a regular 24 year old; out exploring my territory like the baby I was. Cancer was at home with you, out of sight. I was a big city girl. I didn't have the time or the inclination to worry. Maybe I wasn't HAPPY happy, but I was certainly less jaded. Now I'm a thousand slapdash coats of peeling paint layered over a driftwood center, struggling to let go of all the burdens I carry and all the ones I invent for myself. I think I was able to be innocently hopeful at 24 because I didn't actually think that you would die. That was the lie you told us, and maybe yourself, despite the three-year sentence they had handed down. I knew it was a possibility, but the chemo was working, and I naively believed that your window of good health meant that you were getting better.
That spring, you were thin, but vital. You visited us when snow was still on the ground, and then again in April. That was the last time I saw you before I thought of you as dying. You were still so well, running about as always like a foal come newly to its legs. Ordering the house wine, wading through the foot-deep snow with aplomb, puffing tiny clouds of steam with pink cheeks and stocking your pockets with legions of tissues and practically bouncing with joy and optimism. In the photos, you're smiling wide and hugging me tight around the shoulders. Red suede bomber jacket. After you died, I couldn't bear to part with it. I used it to collect firewood at dusk rather than have it sit in a closet, unworn. It's amazing how fast you turned the corner. Cancer lunged at your throat and took you down, and even though we knew it was coming, it felt like a bolt from the blue.
In a garden, grass will never remain within its neat boundaries. It prefers to travel, tunneling under, propagating itself in unconnected areas, metastasizing through your perennials. Cancer is the obvious metaphor, yet your death is like that too. No area of my life is free from the tangled connection to who you were, who you might have been, what you wanted, why you did what you did and why you didn't do what you should have done, which is march into the doctor's office and say: I need a colonoscopy ASAP, my mother was just diagnosed with colon cancer. Already you were past the age when you should have had a routine screening. Why? WHY? Why did you choose death? Or more accurately, why didn't you choose life? Inertia has a tidal pull. I understand this. Life slips out from under us all in slow motion. But in addition to making coffee and emptying the dishwasher, commuting, wife-ing, and mothering, and a thousand other tasks that comprise a day's work, it seems to me that it wouldn't have been that difficult to set aside the time to make the phone call that could have saved your life.
Burdens. I'm so tired of having all these emotions for and about you. It's been so many years that I don't have anything left to feel. Like, literally, all my emotions ran out. Bleak, backbreaking sadness, anger, and now, the dregs of a savage disappointment. There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza. I went through a stage where I was really mad at you for what you wrote in your journal. You said that I was angry as a teenager, that I would hurl that anger, particularly at my father. Which is of course true, but how cowardly to foist the blame for your own bad decisions onto your teenage daughter, and how unreasonable to expect that someone growing up in a damaged home would be emotionally balanced. It was your choice to stay married to a narcissistic alcoholic. Given the circumstances, I don't even think I expressed my anger adequately enough. I regard you now with a level of contempt and pity that contrasts starkly with the hero status you attained by way of dying. I wish you were alive so I could sit you down and have a proper heart to heart. It's so frustrating to not be able to tell you what an imbecile you are. If I could, then maybe I would be able to forgive you. I just don't understand how someone who seemed so wise and was so supportive and knowledgeable could live her life swamped in denial (I just don't understand how a world that makes such wonderful things...could be bad). How could it be that I looked up to you and admired you so much when I strive so hard for self awareness in my own life and you yourself were so unaware? How could I have missed the mark so badly? How could you be so human?
All of this was a meandering cloud dream for so many years, but when I found out I was pregnant, the grief sharpened and took shape again. When Infant was born, it sharpened again. When I started to heal in my heart and get enough sleep to understand the magnitude of your absence alongside his presence, it sharpened yet again. Again now that he's starting to become a person, again when he stands in his crib and looks like the photos of me doing the same at that age. Your absence is like a piece of carrot caught in my throat. I hate your stupid lingering ghost. I am sick of your stupid lingering ghost. Sometimes it makes me better, allows me to strip off layers and become. Sometimes it takes me home. But other times it feels like there's nothing redeeming about it. A toothache. An empty air freshener. The rubbish they put around electronics so they are physically impossible to open without a pair of garden shears, but you try anyway and end up cutting yourself. I AM BORED OF YOU, GO AWAY. I wish I could take out the trash of your ghost and move on. But I can't. You're my cell mate, mate. I'm stuck with you, whoever you were.
The earth in my body
******************************************************************************
I can't believe that it's 2017 and you died in 2004. I'm surprised we don't have flying cars by now! Someone should talk to Michael J. Fox about that. Though we do have hover boards, so I guess he's done his part. What else? Hillary ran for president twice, and no one thought it was that big a deal the second time. Though she did lose and we elected a mad hatter and misogynist, so I'm not sure that's progress. Flat screen TVs got really light and pretty cheap. iPhones became ubiquitous and had their ten year anniversary. Businesses might be realizing that people actually enjoy talking to people, so that annoying trend of stores never having staff on hand to actually assist might be ending.
I was reading one of my earlier posts today, thinking about the way I was back then, happy and carefree and falling in love. I was worried about you of course, writing dark poetry and music about death, living with your illness as a constant shadow in the periphery of my life, yet somehow I was still a regular 24 year old; out exploring my territory like the baby I was. Cancer was at home with you, out of sight. I was a big city girl. I didn't have the time or the inclination to worry. Maybe I wasn't HAPPY happy, but I was certainly less jaded. Now I'm a thousand slapdash coats of peeling paint layered over a driftwood center, struggling to let go of all the burdens I carry and all the ones I invent for myself. I think I was able to be innocently hopeful at 24 because I didn't actually think that you would die. That was the lie you told us, and maybe yourself, despite the three-year sentence they had handed down. I knew it was a possibility, but the chemo was working, and I naively believed that your window of good health meant that you were getting better.
That spring, you were thin, but vital. You visited us when snow was still on the ground, and then again in April. That was the last time I saw you before I thought of you as dying. You were still so well, running about as always like a foal come newly to its legs. Ordering the house wine, wading through the foot-deep snow with aplomb, puffing tiny clouds of steam with pink cheeks and stocking your pockets with legions of tissues and practically bouncing with joy and optimism. In the photos, you're smiling wide and hugging me tight around the shoulders. Red suede bomber jacket. After you died, I couldn't bear to part with it. I used it to collect firewood at dusk rather than have it sit in a closet, unworn. It's amazing how fast you turned the corner. Cancer lunged at your throat and took you down, and even though we knew it was coming, it felt like a bolt from the blue.
In a garden, grass will never remain within its neat boundaries. It prefers to travel, tunneling under, propagating itself in unconnected areas, metastasizing through your perennials. Cancer is the obvious metaphor, yet your death is like that too. No area of my life is free from the tangled connection to who you were, who you might have been, what you wanted, why you did what you did and why you didn't do what you should have done, which is march into the doctor's office and say: I need a colonoscopy ASAP, my mother was just diagnosed with colon cancer. Already you were past the age when you should have had a routine screening. Why? WHY? Why did you choose death? Or more accurately, why didn't you choose life? Inertia has a tidal pull. I understand this. Life slips out from under us all in slow motion. But in addition to making coffee and emptying the dishwasher, commuting, wife-ing, and mothering, and a thousand other tasks that comprise a day's work, it seems to me that it wouldn't have been that difficult to set aside the time to make the phone call that could have saved your life.
Burdens. I'm so tired of having all these emotions for and about you. It's been so many years that I don't have anything left to feel. Like, literally, all my emotions ran out. Bleak, backbreaking sadness, anger, and now, the dregs of a savage disappointment. There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza. I went through a stage where I was really mad at you for what you wrote in your journal. You said that I was angry as a teenager, that I would hurl that anger, particularly at my father. Which is of course true, but how cowardly to foist the blame for your own bad decisions onto your teenage daughter, and how unreasonable to expect that someone growing up in a damaged home would be emotionally balanced. It was your choice to stay married to a narcissistic alcoholic. Given the circumstances, I don't even think I expressed my anger adequately enough. I regard you now with a level of contempt and pity that contrasts starkly with the hero status you attained by way of dying. I wish you were alive so I could sit you down and have a proper heart to heart. It's so frustrating to not be able to tell you what an imbecile you are. If I could, then maybe I would be able to forgive you. I just don't understand how someone who seemed so wise and was so supportive and knowledgeable could live her life swamped in denial (I just don't understand how a world that makes such wonderful things...could be bad). How could it be that I looked up to you and admired you so much when I strive so hard for self awareness in my own life and you yourself were so unaware? How could I have missed the mark so badly? How could you be so human?
All of this was a meandering cloud dream for so many years, but when I found out I was pregnant, the grief sharpened and took shape again. When Infant was born, it sharpened again. When I started to heal in my heart and get enough sleep to understand the magnitude of your absence alongside his presence, it sharpened yet again. Again now that he's starting to become a person, again when he stands in his crib and looks like the photos of me doing the same at that age. Your absence is like a piece of carrot caught in my throat. I hate your stupid lingering ghost. I am sick of your stupid lingering ghost. Sometimes it makes me better, allows me to strip off layers and become. Sometimes it takes me home. But other times it feels like there's nothing redeeming about it. A toothache. An empty air freshener. The rubbish they put around electronics so they are physically impossible to open without a pair of garden shears, but you try anyway and end up cutting yourself. I AM BORED OF YOU, GO AWAY. I wish I could take out the trash of your ghost and move on. But I can't. You're my cell mate, mate. I'm stuck with you, whoever you were.
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