Are you are willing to talk about death? If so, there is probably nothing you won’t talk about. The world is divided between those who will, and those who change the subject.
If you’re still here, the stone on the left is you. Why is your single weight greater than that of three entire stones?
I am 10 years old.
My father says, “Would you like to come with me tomorrow when I go to identify grandpa?”
My mother protests. I say, “I want to go, I want to go.” You’d think a trip to the zoo is on offer. I’m not delighted. I’m not happy. My father invites me to cross a threshold my mother has stepped away from. I am especially invited.
If ever there was a man for teaching moments, it is my father. His own father, still very much alive and kicking, conjures coins through the table, barks like a seal to amuse us when we touch his bald pate. My father ever the opportunist, conjures lessons from the air.
Lest you think our task a grisly one it is not. Death is a formality, attended by sublunary protocols. I accompany my father so that he may say, “I, so and so, certify this to be the body of so and so.” Something is remaining and something has departed. Our language makes this clear.
Lying on a fold-out cot in my grandpa’s study in Somerset, I sleep hardly. My grandpa is my favorite grandparent. I am afraid to see him dead.
We drive to a place under habitually grey skies. Institutional England, green walls, carpet, tile. We view my grandpa through a glass window. He is wearing too much rouge.
Afterward, I keep saying, “I understand now. I understand.” I don’t know exactly where grandpa is, but I know that he is somewhere else and I am amazed. My father is pleased.
I become the stone on the left.
In the pub on a visit she loses her list of preferable subjects. The listeners are Irish, Scots and Welsh the beginning of a story you shouldn’t tell.
“My sister and brother in law, when they crossed the border sleeping in the desert, there were snakes of course. My husband he is heavy footed, unthinking. The first morning they wake up in our house he bangs on their bedroom door like he is the police. They wake up terrified.”
now she wonders if he did it on purpose
“When my sister in law arrived she wants to have a shower, constantly she feels there are insects crawling on her when there aren’t. I show her how to use the shower and check her hair. My Spanish isn’t as good then as now. Her shoulders are broad like mine, her feet the same size as mine. I give her my clothes. The next day I take her to Target so we can buy more plates we don’t have enough while they are staying with us. I ask her to choose the pattern she likes and I imagine she must feel she has landed on the moon. I’ve been to her country there isn’t a store where they live that’s as big as this. She is careful and quiet. She tells us things she won’t tell them at home. She saw the Mexican police throw a woman’s children off a moving train.”
you’d think she’d stop here
“When they cross they come to a house run by Americans. The Americans separate the men from the women and girls. The women and girl children are drugged. You can imagine why. The American men go to that room and… well, you can imagine. My sister in law says that she was told to go to that room, but her husband asked for her to stay with him, made an excuse and she was spared the things that happened in that room. I don’t believe her but I pretend that I do.”
The Irishman, the Scotsman and the Welshwoman look down into their beers. Scrabbling for her list of appropriate phrases, she says, “Well now that I’ve cheered you right up with that story, perhaps another round?”
There is a poem I will never forget, though I can’t tell you the words. I will tell you the gist instead. It’s about a man, a jug full of woes. He comes to the woman who is like a cup. He pours his woes into her and walks away light. She, heavily sloshing, cannot find the means to pour herself out.
Whenever I drive my car, I think about death. You will understand this if you live in my city.
Terrorists of the road, you will feel the harm you did, when the illusion of your world falls away ie you are dying.
I am comforted by this
Sex is the thing we imagine we will miss doing with our bodies when we no longer have a body. This is not true for everyone. Many people, most of them women, never enjoyed sex. The definition of tragedy is something unnecessary.
Aren’t we striving for the death of self when we couple? Isn’t this why ORGASM the little death?
When my partner and I come together unexpectedly and we haven’t got to anal yet, I roar with laughter.
My father knows that he is dying. He explains the way in which his body will shut down and says it won’t be too painful. I fly to where he is and he is happy to see me. The day I arrive is the last day he speaks. I am one of the people who care for him and I am not alone.
He has told me, “When I see the sky, the leaves, the thought of leaving this…”
One time in the many days it takes, he opens his eyes brown eyes a milky indigo moving against the window I wonder does he see the light, does he see something I can’t see?
My cup runneth over when you like, comment and restack. Is there anything you’d particularly like me to explore here? Let me know!
Surprisingly good, but that’s because any time I find good writing I’m surprised. Nice work!
Having reached an age and state of health where death is imminant, though it may takes a year or more, or less, I think about death, and I find it comforting that I will no longer have to deal with the vageries of this world. I have no idea if there's a hereafter, I've never met anyone who's come back and told me about it. I don't think that reincarnation is real, and have no idea if there is anything else. In the meantime, I'll keep doing whatever it is I do until I can no longer do it.