August 20: Supernatural Event, Why, Maggie Nelson, Adventures of Stickman

What did it feel like?  He felt the way that young girl whom he and Annie had once seen falling through the air had felt.  Expression tormented, he spent a long time before the mirror, reading into his own face great foolishness.  He did not like to look back and recall the last days of that other Ives.  He wanted to be drunk.  He had nothing to say.  Getting two weeks' sympathy leave from the agency, he spent much of the time pacing up and down the hall and standing by the windows.  It meant despairing about the supernatural and yet waiting every night for a supernatural event.

That is Ives' way of grieving.  He's angry, confused, and heartbroken.  A devout Catholic all his life, Ives, for the first time in his life, questions God's wisdom and goodness.  I think, in his pacing and staring out windows, Ives is waiting for some sign, anything at all, to provide some sense to a seemingly senseless situation.  He's dealing with the big question that plagues anyone who loses a loved one, especially someone very young.  That question is simply "Why?"

I have been asking myself that question a lot today.  I returned to work this morning.  It was difficult walking into the medical center.  Everywhere I looked, I saw my sister.  Walking through the parking lot.  On the stairs.  In the hallways.  Once, as I was looking out a window on the third floor, I swear I saw her in the rain, in her blue scrubs, carrying her ever-present mug of ice water.

I don't understand why my sister had to suffer so much the final year of her life.  Or why she had to die.  She was a good person.  Selfless, for the most part.  On more than one occasion, when I was strapped for cash to get my car fixed or buy Christmas presents for my kids, money would suddenly appear in my checking account.  Sure, she could be stubborn to the point of exasperation.  In the end, however, if I asked, she gave, no questions asked.

I don't see any divine plan in this big pile of cow shit.  I just see shit.  During the course of the day, I would get hit by a tsunami of grief.  I would sit in my chair or stop dead in my tracks, choked with great liquid sobs.  It felt like I was drowning.  Literally.  Then I would float to the surface again and be able to move.

I know I will never understand the "why" of my sister's death.  It will never make sense to me, and I will have to learn to accept that.  I know God doesn't make mistakes, but, in this case, I think He had better options.  For example, there's a certain billionaire running for President of the United States right now who would have been an excellent alternative, stupid hair and all.

Not that Saint Marty is telling God how to run the universe.

90 from Bluets

by:  Maggie Nelson

Last night I wept in a way I haven't wept for some time.  I wept until I aged myself.  I watched it happen in the mirror.  I watched the lines arrive around my eyes like engraved sunbursts; it was like watching flowers open in time-lapse on a windowsill.  The tears not only aged my face, they also changed its texture, turned the skin of my cheeks into putty.  I recognized this as a rite of decadence, but I did not know how to stop it.

Adventures of STICKMAN

December 6: Good-bye, Sad Day, Joy Harjo, "Mourning Song," New Cartoon

"Good-bye!" she whispered.  Then she summoned all her strength and waved one of her legs at him.

The last words Charlotte speaks in the book.  The last action she performs.  A farewell to her best friend, whose life she has just saved.  After this paragraph, she basically disappears.  Retreats from the narrative and dies.  For me, it's the saddest paragraph in Charlotte's Web.

It has been an extremely sad day.  This morning, I attended the funeral for my colleague Ray.  Sixty-six years old.  Father.  Teacher.  Mentor.  Beloved friend.  The mass at Saint Peter's Cathedral was beautiful.  When the choir began singing "Panis Angelicus" at the beginning of the service, I began sobbing.  It went downhill from there.  By the end, I was pretty much a red-eyed, snotty mess, as were all my other friends from the English Department.  There will never be another person like Ray, who truly knew the definition of the word "servant."  He lived to help people.

I'm pretty tired this evening.  Emotionally drained.  In the days to come, I will pick up the pieces of my life in the English Department and move on.  Somehow.  There is a huge, Ray-sized vacuum in the halls and offices.  Today was the end and the beginning.

Joy Harjo has a poem about grieving that I think is appropriate for this evening.  It comes from her book The Woman Who Fell From the Sky.  

Farewell, Ray.  My friend.  I mourn you.  Miss you.  Will never, ever forget the lessons you taught me.

Saint Marty is a better person because of you.

Mourning Song

by:  Joy Harjo

It's early evening in the small world, where gods gamble for good weather as the sky turns red.  Of grief rattling around in the bowl of my skeleton.  How I'd like to spit you out, turn you into another human, or remake the little dog spirit who walked out of our house without its skin toward an unseen land.  We were left behind to figure it out during a harvest turned to ashes.  I need to mourn with the night, turn to the gleaming house of bones under your familiar brown skin.  The hot stone of our hearts will make a fire.  If we cry more tears we will ruin the land with salt; instead let's praise that which would distract us with despair.  Make a song for death, a song with yellow teeth and bad breath.  For loneliness, the house guest who eats everything and refuses to leave.  A song for bad weather so we can stand together under our leaking roof, and make a terrible music with our wise and ragged bones.

Confessions of Saint Marty

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