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And then Ives blinked and found himself standing on the sidewalk beside his wife, across the street from the Church of the Ascension. On the pavement, just by his feet, was a large piece of canvas, and under it a body, stretched out. Then the officer lifted off the canvas and shined a flashlight onto the face to reveal the shocked and bewildered expression of his son.
My sister died this morning at 6:27 a.m.
When I saw her last night, she was breathing hard, each intake hitting her chest like a hammer. I leaned over, said her name and then, "It's me. Marty." Her eyelid lifted, and she focused on me. I told her about my long day of work. I told her about classes starting next week. Just before I left, I leaned over and whispered, "You don't have to be afraid, Sal. You don't."
When I got to my parents' house at around 5 a.m., my sister was surrounded by the people who loved her. My mother and father, siblings, nieces, nephews, and best friends. We all stood around her, touched her hands and feet, told her how much we loved her.
Her breaths got slower, the spaces in between longer, and then she was simply gone.
I thought I was prepared for it. I thought I was going to hold myself together. I thought a lot of things. But, in those moments following my sister's death, I felt an incredible emptiness enter me, as if I had been scooped out like a pumpkin at Halloween. I wasn't prepared.
It has been about twelve hours since that moment. I am still not prepared for a world without my sister. For 17 years, I worked with her. Eight- and nine- and ten-hour days. I spent more time with her than any of my other siblings, and we knew each other deeply. Trusted each other deeply. Loved each other deeply, without having to say it.
There will be no cartoon tonight. No laughter.
My sister once said to me, "You know, I wish I was as strong as you."
Saint Marty isn't strong tonight. He's heartbroken.
98 from Bluets
by: Maggie Nelson
Vincent van Gogh, whose depression, some say, was likely related to temporal epilepsy, famously saw and painted the world in almost unbearably vivid colors. After his nearly unsuccessful attempt to take his life by shooting himself in the gut, when asked why he should not be saved, he famously replied, "The sadness will last forever." I imagine he was right.
My sister died this morning at 6:27 a.m.
When I saw her last night, she was breathing hard, each intake hitting her chest like a hammer. I leaned over, said her name and then, "It's me. Marty." Her eyelid lifted, and she focused on me. I told her about my long day of work. I told her about classes starting next week. Just before I left, I leaned over and whispered, "You don't have to be afraid, Sal. You don't."
When I got to my parents' house at around 5 a.m., my sister was surrounded by the people who loved her. My mother and father, siblings, nieces, nephews, and best friends. We all stood around her, touched her hands and feet, told her how much we loved her.
Her breaths got slower, the spaces in between longer, and then she was simply gone.
I thought I was prepared for it. I thought I was going to hold myself together. I thought a lot of things. But, in those moments following my sister's death, I felt an incredible emptiness enter me, as if I had been scooped out like a pumpkin at Halloween. I wasn't prepared.
It has been about twelve hours since that moment. I am still not prepared for a world without my sister. For 17 years, I worked with her. Eight- and nine- and ten-hour days. I spent more time with her than any of my other siblings, and we knew each other deeply. Trusted each other deeply. Loved each other deeply, without having to say it.
There will be no cartoon tonight. No laughter.
My sister once said to me, "You know, I wish I was as strong as you."
Saint Marty isn't strong tonight. He's heartbroken.
98 from Bluets
by: Maggie Nelson
Vincent van Gogh, whose depression, some say, was likely related to temporal epilepsy, famously saw and painted the world in almost unbearably vivid colors. After his nearly unsuccessful attempt to take his life by shooting himself in the gut, when asked why he should not be saved, he famously replied, "The sadness will last forever." I imagine he was right.
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| I miss your smile |
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I don't often go back to read old blog posts. They unmoor me, drag me back to older versions of myself. This version, in particular, is not one that I care to visit often. But here's the thing--this model of me, from six years ago--was still breathing the same air that my sister had breathed. It connects me to her for the space of a few paragraphs, a couple hundred words.
I still miss my sister a great deal. For years, she was the glue that held my family together. She was generous, kind, full of love. She wasn't perfect, and she knew that. But she tried hard to make a difference in the world every day of her life. Not too many people can say that.
I still struggle with the meaning of my sister's death. How it all fits into some divine plan. Now, tonight, six years later, I am no closer to solving that mystery, and I probably never will. Sometimes, you just have to embrace the ineffable. Accept the limitations of your understanding.
My sister suffered a great deal the last year or so of her life. Sometimes, I can still hear her last breaths in the middle of the night. They stay with me, perhaps as a reminder never to take daily ordinary things for granted.
Here is Thomas Merton coming to terms with a truth about Communion and sacrifice:
Faint gold fire flashed from the shadowy flanks of the upraised chalice at
our altar.
“Do you know what Love is? You have never known the meaning of
Love, never, you who have always drawn all things to the center of your
own nothingness. Here is Love in this chalice full of Blood, Sacrifice,
mactation. Do you not know that to love means to be killed for glory of the
Beloved? And where is your love? Where is now your Cross, if you say you
want to follow Me, if you pretend you love Me?”
All around the church the bells rang as gentle and fresh as dew.
“But these men are dying for Me. These monks are killing themselves for
Me: and for you, for the world, for the people who do not know Me, for the
millions that will never know them on this earth ...”
After Communion I thought my heart was going to explode.
Sometimes, the sacrifices we make in this world are small--the last piece of pizza. Sometimes, they are huge and unavoidable--your sister with lymphoma of the brain. And you think your heart is going to explode with love or grief.
Tonight, Saint Marty wishes he could hear his sister's voice again. The universe made a little more sense with her in it, and it has been a lot darker since she's been gone.
A poem for my sister . . .
Strawberry Picking
for Sally
You took me strawberry picking
once, drove out to a farm
where we paid to squat in green
beds laced with tongues of red.
I could feel my ears and neck
tighten under the punishing
sun as we filled Morning Glory
ice cream buckets with our
harvest, each berry looking to me
like some vital body part,
an organ or muscle necessary
for life. You sat on your haunches,
fingers staining red, as if you
were some battlefield surgeon
patching up the fallen with only
your hands. Every now and then,
you would lift a berry to your lips,
eat it in a hummingbird moment,
smiling the smile of the freshly
healed at Lourdes, where miracles
are common as empty wheelchairs
or dandelions in a July field.
The days since you’ve been gone,
I see strawberries everywhere,
in a welt of blood on my lip
after shaving, a stop sign,
a friend’s dyed hair,
my son’s sunburned shoulders,
oxygen in the gills of a perch.
Last night, I stood outside, under
ribbons of borealis, watched
them glide between the stars
like garter snakes in a midnight
Eden. The Bible says that, in the cool
of the day, Adam and Eve heard
God taking a stroll through
the garden. There were probably
peacocks nesting in the pines,
a stream talking with moss and stone,
the scurry of mole and spider
in the ferns.
That’s what I believe you heard
in your last moments of breath.
You heard peafowl screams,
brook trout leaps. Grasshopper wing
and corn silk. And you heard
his divine toes in the grass, walking
along. When he came to you,
he couldn’t resist. He reached down,
plucked you from the stem. You were
ripe. Sweet. Ready. He put you
in his Morning Glory bucket, continued
on into the dew and sunlight.
once, drove out to a farm
where we paid to squat in green
beds laced with tongues of red.
I could feel my ears and neck
tighten under the punishing
sun as we filled Morning Glory
ice cream buckets with our
harvest, each berry looking to me
like some vital body part,
an organ or muscle necessary
for life. You sat on your haunches,
fingers staining red, as if you
were some battlefield surgeon
patching up the fallen with only
your hands. Every now and then,
you would lift a berry to your lips,
eat it in a hummingbird moment,
smiling the smile of the freshly
healed at Lourdes, where miracles
are common as empty wheelchairs
or dandelions in a July field.
The days since you’ve been gone,
I see strawberries everywhere,
in a welt of blood on my lip
after shaving, a stop sign,
a friend’s dyed hair,
my son’s sunburned shoulders,
oxygen in the gills of a perch.
Last night, I stood outside, under
ribbons of borealis, watched
them glide between the stars
like garter snakes in a midnight
Eden. The Bible says that, in the cool
of the day, Adam and Eve heard
God taking a stroll through
the garden. There were probably
peacocks nesting in the pines,
a stream talking with moss and stone,
the scurry of mole and spider
in the ferns.
That’s what I believe you heard
in your last moments of breath.
You heard peafowl screams,
brook trout leaps. Grasshopper wing
and corn silk. And you heard
his divine toes in the grass, walking
along. When he came to you,
he couldn’t resist. He reached down,
plucked you from the stem. You were
ripe. Sweet. Ready. He put you
in his Morning Glory bucket, continued
on into the dew and sunlight.
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