Tirza ~ May 13

 

I don’t want to write about Pamela.

Her naked body curled on the white sheets like a Caravaggio angel

I don’t want to write about the absence in the absolute.

The ending, the end.

Not about about the daily details, 

what to wear, the laundry, next week’s plans, I practice as a sacrament.

I don’t want to write about grief that I pretend I know 

as it eludes me, hiding under rocks like a snake, 

Emerging only when I look away 

To strike at my heart.

 

I have prided myself as a coach that I don’t hesitate to sit with people’s pain, 

said things like let’s go meet this unbearable feeling, let’s sit with it, let’s get down to it, 

I’ve signed up for courses called the Bad Stuff, Trauma and At Death’s Door. 

The gist of this course is, Oh death, we deny you exist, and yet when we admit you do, you enliven us.  We were asked to cut out our footprints on black paper and put them somewhere prominent in our house to be sure we saw them as we passed by, to remind us of our death.  It was marvelous, accompanied by poems.

Turns out, I flunk.

 

I don’t want to write about death, the death I know nothing about, the death that erases all of someone, and the parts of me that tether and moor.  

I don’t want to write about the conversations of a dying friend, over the past few years, the understandings, the pain, the laughter breaking through like streaks of gold.  The talk that had no artifice, that spoke no lies.  No need to keep a secret or pretend.  Sitting in the shadow of death, we were grateful for what light we had left to share.

 

I believe in God, she told me in that last phone call before my rushing to see her in a last visit.  I don’t care how controversial that is, and what people think of me.  I believe in God.

And I believe you are an angel, I said.

Maybe I will become an angel.

No, I said, you already are an angel.