The first time I ever watched someone die was at the age of ten.
On a hospital-like bed,
in a non hospital living room, her chest heaved
in the final gasping seconds of a life
cut off by cancer.
My father placed a call, and the only
words I remember him saying were,
"Yes, she's passed."
I don't know who he was speaking to, and,
at the time,
didn't really understand why he said "passed"
in place of "died".
I still really don’t understand the shyness
with which we treat a word that is truly
the only commonality between each being that crosses the threshold
into this world.
We apply it frivolously,
to computers,
mall traffic,
freeways,
the in-betweens of radio broadcasts,
but are almost afraid to apply it where it makes the most sense,
attempting to blunt the edges of a sharp blow
to our own mortality.
Is it poetry for sanity’s sake that we
create alternate egos of a common thread
which ties all persons to one another?
My mother is dead, as I will be, one day,
as all men and women reading this will be.
Whether a failing heart,
or sudden stop of a long fall,
or at the hands of another,
or the very hands with which one has carved a life
into the fabric of other interlocking lives, it is certainty,
and it is unavoidable.
Perhaps this is what makes us so keen
to speak of it as if it were merely a transference
from one room to the next,
or one country to the neighboring country,
or one plane of consciousness to
some place that we merely dream of, creating as we go,
once we pass through
the veil that limits us from seeing those that has walked through.
The mortal coil, this state of being,
this firing of synapses and neurons and senses….
Clung to so tightly that the antithesis is taboo,
\as though if we speak of it,
he will come and claim someone else
that is dear to us or even
the very person that uttered those words.
I have seen the face of death,
in all its form and function, and I find
that death is not interruption to life for anyone
but the soul to which it has adhered itself.
From the body that is buried, the greenest grass
and most beautiful flowers grow.
Into the gap that is left floods
more beautiful friendships,
loves,
lives…
Ever right behind me,
breathing on the nape of my neck,
whispering nonsense until finally it is my turn,
Death only spurns me onward.
All the friends and family that have heard their names called,
buried in the back of my mind,
bear the most delicious fruit,
and blossom into the most intricate garden imaginable,
all due to this taboo concept,
this unknowable condition,
this edged blade that cuts deep enough to plant the lessons
we choose to put there in the place
where that person stood in our web of interconnecting strands of life, taking root in memory and glorious daydreams
of all the moments that endeared their life to ours.
Only the dead have this sort of power,
and only the grasp of the real concept,
in all its unshielded, raw, bitter, uncaring, blunt, ******* horrible form can birth the greatest treasure our lives will ever experience.
I do not miss, because my thoughts make them immortal.
I do not mourn them due to their gifts they leave
in wake of the immense impact they have had upon my life.
Maybe I am merely shielding myself from some horrible truth
that I cannot grasp,
yet I truly cannot fathom what that would be.
From Leora Tracy Amrich, to my grandparents,
to every man and woman that I served with,
to the Buddha, I have felt my way through what seemed
a dark, twisted, ugly hell until I opened myself to what I feared,
and ended up fearless, unbroken, and with a
foundation of friends and family that I stand on
with all of you,
the tangible and bleeding and
tear jerking friends and family
that I want to share this amazing fruit and otherworldly beauty
that people we both know have left behind
for us to live with and love in place of their faces.