July 17: Sister's Birthday, Sugarloaf Mountain, "Vigil Strange I Kept in Ann Arbor One Morning"

Today would have been my sister Sally's 59th birthday.  It's hard to believe that she left us five years ago.  I still think of her every day.  She and I worked together for almost 20 years, eight-, nine-, and ten-hour days sometimes.

Tonight, in honor of Sal, I'm doing something crazy.  At around 11 o'clock, I'm going to drive to the base of Sugarloaf Mountain, and my family and I are going to climb it in the dark.  Our goal:  to see something wondrous.  A burning wheel in the sky.  A miracle.

And when Saint Marty sees that comet, he will think of his sister's smile and give thanks.

Vigil Strange I Kept in Ann Arbor One Morning

by:  Martin Achatz

after Walt Whitman

I sat by the bed railings, listened to you breathe.

Not the watery gasps of two weeks later, but breaths doing

the work they were meant to do, carrying oxygen to organs,

limbs, pink fingernails, fissured lips, to your damaged

and damaging brain where your voice nestled between

tumors, walled up against the apocalypse of your body.

I sat.  Held your hand.  Made small talk about the humid air

of Ann Arbor, school and work, because I couldn’t bring myself

to make big talk about goodbyes or letting go.  No, I talked to you

the way I talked when we used to eat lunch together, the smells

of vinaigrette and flax seed and bananas around us.  Everyday talk,

because I wasn’t ready for last day talk.

I told you about the film classes I would teach in the fall, listed

the movies we would watch.  Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights,

Singin’ in the Rain, Citizen Kane.  I sang a song to you,

the one Gene Kelly sings to Debbie Reynolds.  You’re my lucky

star.  I saw you from afar.  I got the words wrong.

I vigiled there for an hour, while your body went about the business

of closing up shop.  Never once did I say “I love you” or “I’m sorry for”

or “Don’t go.”  Instead, I talked about Charles Foster Kane and his sled.

Rosebud burning in the furnace at the end, crackling, peeling, ashing.

And, in those last minutes before the official acts of hospice and dying

took over, I asked you one question--“Do you want some ice?”—and you grunted

at me.  I placed a cube on your chapped tongue and watched it 
melt down your chin.