ABSENCE

I've only known one human death that occurred in my presence,
but I think I learned something.
I will write of it again.
I will write of it often.
I will write of it yet.

I remember, when I had gotten her up that morning,
she said, out loud and clear, "I have to make some money!"
I told her, "Mom, you're making money just sitting there,
your SSI is coming in so don't worry."

Yes, it was, all $355/month of it, and it helped.
Why was I not more surprised to hear her speak?
I don't remember.
Those were the first words she had spoken since her
stroke, months before.
They would be her last.

That night, we were watching TV.
It was a ghost story.
Did she finish the show?
I don't think so.
I put her to bed.
I opened up my cot beside her.
Why did I not sleep in the bed with her?
I don't remember.
We had slept together all while I grew, too poor for uncommon items.

I remember I could not sleep.
My nerves were raw, on edge.
Yet I could give no thought to why, only tossed and turned, irritably.

Now I know
that when Death comes,
it makes one very nervous,
without letting you quite know
why.

But comes with a heavy cloud of unknowing
laid over your being.
I think it is intended as a gentleness.

She died overnight.
The next day
the world had shifted in its orbit
for I had never known an earth without her on it,
and would never again know an earth with her.

It is
it comes
a calm
a heaviness,
a depth you never knew before,
a surrender without knowing it to be such;
you have, after all, surrendered
a soul.
You have lost.
You have lost
her.

There is much to be learned from the loss,
though the mechanisms of your learning be unclear.

There is no book
there is flesh.
There is sorrow.
There is quiet.
There is peace.
There is forgetting.
And you can't remember how you forgot.
There are gifts Death brings when it takes your love.
Perhaps Death is a pack rat.

Much is written of Death. All of it, I suspect
better than I have communicated here.
The only point I wanted to make
was how very, very real
and clear
the time of passing becomes
even if you can't communicate it years later.
And how few of us today are
gifted with that as love passes
in hospitals rather than our homes, our bedrooms.

I would urge everyone to experience Death.
It is a great teacher.
And it comes whether you are there or not.
But if you want full credit,
attendance is mandatory.

By the way, the TV show she was watching that night
was a ghost story.
The ghost was named Harold.
He wanted the living woman to come to him.
My father had died nine months prior to this night.
They had been divorced for 34 years
His name was Harold.

I don't know what to make of that lesson.
Or maybe I do.