Marie Howe writes about a her dying brother . . .
A Certain Light
by: Marie Howe
He had taken the right pills the night before.
We had counted them out
from the egg carton where they were numbered so there’d be no mistake.
He had taken the morphine and the prednisone and the amitriptyline
and Florinef and Vancomycin and Haleion too quickly
and had thrown up in the bowl Joe had brought to the bed—a thin string
of blue spit—then waited a few minutes to calm himself,
before he took them all again. And had slept through the night
and the morning and was still sleeping at noon—or not sleeping.
He was breathing maybe twice a minute, and we couldn’t wake him,
we couldn’t wake him until we shook him hard calling, John wake up now
John wake up—Who is the president?
And he couldn’t answer.
His doctor told us we’d have to keep him up for hours.
He was all bones and skin, no tissue to absorb the medicine.
He couldn’t walk unless tow people held him.
And we made him talk about the movie: What was the best moment in
On the Waterfront? What was the music in Gone with the Wind?
And for seven hours he answered, if only to please us, mumbling
I like the morphine, sinking, rising, sleeping, rousing,
then only pain again—but wakened.
So wakened that late that night in one of those still blue moments
that were a kind of paradise, he finally opened his eyes wide,
and the room filled with a certain light we thought we’d never see again.
Look at you two, he said. And we did.
And Joe said, Look at you.
And John said, How do I look?
And Joe said, Handsome.
What a gorgeous, heartbreaking moment of bravery. Howe’s brother John is dying, yet, in one of his brief moments of lucidity, he attempts to comfort the two loves of his life as they process their loss. In turn, John’s partner, Joe, in another moment of heartbreaking bravery, tries to comfort John, calling him “handsome” for (probably) the last time.
Anyone who has held vigil at a dying loved one’s bedside has witnessed bravery. Not the defeating-a-cyclops-or-the-Green-Goblin kind of bravery. My sister, Sally, suffered greatly in her last months. Near the end, the lymphoma stole her speech and motor functions, pressing against her brain, causing a major stroke. She didn’t choose her fate. Yet, she didn’t rage, rage against the dying of the light. She fought as hard as she could for as long as she could, and then, when her frail body had no more fight left in it, she slipped away, surrounded by everyone who loved her. Bravely. Quietly.
There are heroes all around us. Single mothers raising their kids on minimum wage salaries. Doctors caring for pregnant women in defiance of draconian laws. Trans people being their authentic selves each and every day. Fathers teaching their sons to be gentle, loving people. Teachers buying classroom supplies with their own money. I could go on, but you get the idea.
You don’t need special powers to be a hero. Just because you can’t fly doesn’t mean you also can’t raise a grieving person’s spirits. Just because you don’t have superhuman strength doesn’t mean you also can’t lift a shade and fill a dark room with light. Just because you don’t have x-ray vision doesn’t mean you also can’t look into a people’s eyes and see their pain.
You see, being a hero isn’t all that hard. It’s just a matter of making the right choices. Put down that cell phone and talk to your partner or kids at dinner. Bring some groceries to a food pantry. Shovel the sidewalk for an elderly neighbor. Or, even easier, ask a friend, “How are you?” and really mean it; listen to them. In short, be kind, attentive, and generous. That’s all it takes.
My heroes today: my son, working the second day at his new job; my daughter, living five hours away and working her ass off to become a doctor; and my wife, putting up with my shit (metaphorically and/or literally) every day of our marriage.
Saint Marty wrote a poem about heroes for tonight . . .
Hero Worship
by: Martin Achatz
Loading my car for a trip to the laundromat,
I heard her before I saw her beating
her dark wings and white breast against
the narrow windows of the garage, gray
rectangles of sky calling her like the sirens
called Odysseus. I’m no birder, She could
have been a nuthatch or finch or junco.
But in her frantic attempts to escape,
I found something heroic, as if she was
some poor nymph, transformed by Athena
to avoid Apollo’s lustful claws.
I opened the garage door wide, flapped
an old towel in the air, tried herding her
toward open air. She circled the rafters
once, twice, dove at my head, then,
as if her feathers suddenly felt the pull
of wind, swooped out of the garage
into the belly of clouds so fast even
Homer would have been left speechless.
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