They gathered the way people do
when there’s no right way to gather
by accident, by necessity, by love.
Because no one is getting embalmed,
there's no one to do that, so people have
funerals quickly, so we have our One Month's Minds.
People can arrange it, we link up half-a-dozen locations
By screen and signal and long-distance breath.
From front-bunkers and kitchens and borrowed town-halls
where the light never quite reaches the corners anymore.
Many poured ***** like it was medicine.
Many more drank it like it was forgiveness.
Laughter broke out too loud, then too quiet.
Names were spoken carefully,
as if saying them wrong might break what little was holding.
They told stories.
Everyone, their very
favourite stories about
her, almost all of us did.
It's a part of these things.
The good stories.
The funny stories.
The stupid stories.
The touching stories.
The ones that only make sense if you were there
and somehow matter even more if you weren’t.
A letter was read—
official, weighty, full of honour.
Yes, from the President himself.
Our leader's voice from far away wrote
just the right things
in just the right order,
and still it wasn’t enough,
because it never, ever is.
And then there was him.
The heart-of-her-heart.
Left to very last after all
others shared their memories.
He stood where the words should have been
and couldn’t find them.
Hands empty.
Throat tight.
The six rooms leaning forward, waiting, kind but helpless.
And then—
as if she had always planned it—
Кітті Кіт ran up and brought the guitar.
Not a grand gesture.
Not a speech. Just him & "Sweetheart", his once-guitar
that he gifted to the one remembered tonight on their very
first date, June 13th 1988, a long time ago; that wood and
those strings...her hair and skin held the memory of his
hands, too, that so recently knew all of these so very well.
Кітті Кіт whispering in his ear: Maybe play a song she liked?
And he played.
He didn’t try to be brave.
He didn’t try to be strong.
He just sang this one song she loved,
A Canadian one, it came to mind immediately,
it's the only song that could be played it seemed,
the one that knows how to walk between worlds
without asking permission...it was meant for now.
And something happened then.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just… right.
Each of the linked rooms stilled.
Every noise fell away so quickly.
Even the grief listened attentively.
At the end for long seconds one could
hear that proverbial pin drop. Then four
of us, her closest friends, started to wail, then
tears spread like a horrible, wonderful virus.
Hard men cried who hadn’t cried since
I'm sure their age was in single-digits, and
who will never cry again in their lives quite likely, wept.
People who thought they were empty found they weren’t.
For a few minutes, everyone was held
by the same sound,
the same remembering.
And now—
a year, seven months, and fourteen days later—
I take that moment
and turn it gently in my hands.
I slow it down.
I let it run backward.
I let light do what words can’t.
A figure walks.
Another joins.
Then fades, the way love does—
not gone, just elsewhere.
But I don't like that, so unlike
life, I just make it run in reverse.
I put the happy part at the end
instead of the beginning.
And the song remains.
So maybe this is not just a video
I threw together, maybe it is a vigil.
Maybe even it is a promise kept
Even though I never made one to her.
After those long years of war, and now these six months
finally away from it, learning what that long forgotten
concept relax truly means again because we aren't most
unconsciously but constantly scanning the sky for drones.
Maybe it is the grief in us both learning how to breathe in
and out of us, a part of us; maybe even a part we might be
learning to share as one shared breath...I don't mind Canada.
He says I didn’t just make something beautiful with his
song he did not even know I recorded back on that night.
He says I made a place for a heavy memory to finally rest,
and that makes it the best Christmas present he's ever gotten.
And that, oh,
is a very old kind of magic.
My little video for Major Pokorny's "One Month's Mind" for the
song her man played, Daniel Lanois' "The Maker", 11 May 2024.
I'm glad he wasn't able to find words, so instead found this song:
https://tinyurl.com/ChristmasTheMaker
Христос Родився, Славімо Його!!
— Наталія