“Do You Think He’s Dying?”
“You almost died Momma,” my eldest daughter said to me today, as I was driving to drop my beloved cat Baryshnikov at the vet after saying with utter terror, the day before, what we all had been thinking for months:
“Do you think he’s dying?”
I couldn’t believe I said it outloud but also couldn’t believe I hadn’t. We don’t talk about death, most of us… even if it’s the one thing we all will also experience.
Cut to: I’m driving a car though it hurt too much to drive to my own spine-pain appointment this week (the things we do for love?), saying things like, “This pain shouldn’t be legal” with complete sincerity. No drama. No hyperbole. I cannot live forever if forever feels like this.
But that’s not now. In the now, I’m driving a car at semi legal speeds and the pain is illegally high and I’m playing a new playlist so music can do what it always has done: transport me outside my body.
Each soundtrack constructed for the 11 shows our dance company had planned ahead had been built in albums written in capital letters, screaming things like DUMPSTER or WHAT because the songs would gather, amorphous… and then the story would appear. You can’t name a thing if you don’t know it yet.
So we are driving and blasting “no capitals” and I start dreaming accidentally and said: “How soon is too soon to just have a master class for a few counts of 8? If I was careful?” And I know (I KNOW) that even if I can’t sit right now, having an hour a week of no pressure joy and living in songs softly (and not running from my shame at failing everyone) is a salve for pain, not a cause (except for that last part). And then she said:
“I guess other people determine that… but Momma, you almost died.”
Most of us will want to click away from a post about this. War, mortality, grey areas (then lean towards cobalt light to reread details about a grizzly murder or a tragic suicide.)
We celebrate a birth we don’t remember most every year… but pretend posts like these are best left for surly girls who like Akhmatova and Cisneros. My Kiddo has no drama or hyperbole (this time): this winter was really that bad.
Death has a look to it. Rarely, it doesn’t. Zachary smiled through his vent until the very end to try to not scare me; He never stopped protecting. How death looks is not always what you think (it’s the eyes) and it’s not scored to Nick Drake or Alexi Murdoch like my soundtracks would say.
I’m driving- unable to stop the pull to people even as the emotional paper cut is still hemorrhaging. But love and loss are literally the same thing in different directions, both wishing to bridge the gap; Birthdays and their opposite.
I’m carrying new scars that I hate, but a pallor that feels promising now, new… and in that, I can finally see how close it really came. How much we didn’t talk about it.
I guess we can’t name a thing if we don’t know it yet.
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Okay Bailey first of you've failed absolutely no one. There's a reason people are terrified about talking about death around you, and that's because you are so cherished. This in fact is the biggest reason we generally don't talk about death. It's not that it brings us to face or own mortality, but rather it hits way too close to home in the fact that we could (and indeed eventually will) lose someone we love and cherish. There's only three people in this world outside of my parents (and siblings to a degree that whole sibling rivalry thing ya know) that I could not bear to lose, and you're one of them I cherish you that much. There would've been four on that list outside of family, but sadly one of them did pass away just about two years ago (rest in peace Amy Lee Fisher "chronically.ams" I still miss you as deeply as the reaches of the galaxies). Regardless some people are just too cherished to ever imagine losing them permanently, and that is part of the reason we don't speak on death. The other part is the permanence of it. We don't like absolutes. We like black and white in general, but not complete absolutes. It makes us ponder what happens after, where we go, and just as importantly what are we leaving behind. Let's be honest we are just transients in this world (some tragically faster than others), but we all have another thing in common and that's we all have regrets on things we should've done. Try as we might there'll still be times we're so wrapped up in our own heads, or something as powerful as pain that we take for granted the ability to breath, or do anything for that matter, and we let opportunities slip by while we're reeling. I want you to know that you are leaving behind one hell of a legacy already, but that your time is nowhere near up yet, and that I don't want to see you waste a single moment that you can help (yes I know it's sometimes impossible to not wallow in self-pity or misery, but any moment you're not I want to see you take full advantage of).