GOODBYE CEREMONY
Your husband, your son and your daughter have left. Their disconnected legs are mechanical vehicles carrying sagging shoulders and slapped faces away to restless beds. Out the window, there is no thunder, no raven, no song. There is only the noise of this room, the lights buzzing and faucet dripping. I say, “Alright, then.” I begin what is left for me to do.
I close the door and sit beside you, looking hard for a light upon your brow, but you don’t share any secrets with me now. There are lines that, despite my longing to, I haven’t crossed. Most things we never were for each other. We met in this room and you told me stories. I held your hand and spoke in therapeutic riddles. Still, Beth, aren’t we friends?
Earlier, I held you, your limp weight and escaping heat swaddled against me as we turned your body to clean you and untie you from the lines. Blood gushed from a wound. I had to remind myself there was no longer any urgency. I felt your head against my neck and realized this was the first time we’d embraced. There was that strangling grip of grief around my throat.
Now, we are together on your deathbed (which is just the bed in which you hoped and slept and died). I am hot and you are cold. I have brought the best supplies available: soft, white washcloths, clear water, my hyacinth lotion.
I wipe old tears from your eyes. I clean the foulness of dying from your open mouth. I remember vomit and how, even as I was hanging another bag of good poison, you’d said if you had the choice you’d not do this again. I’d paused and asked, “Do you mean it?” And you’d said no.
The rich aroma of hyacinth expands in my chest until it is nearly bursting. I think of your garden. Three months ago, you’d invited me to visit when you got better. I anoint your hands and feet with the lotion. Your fingers are thin and compliant. They curve around my hands. I wish we could hold on.
I wrote this a month ago, and the grief has spent the last 30 days catching up with me. It was a quiet sort of grief—a confused sort—a grief that didn’t recognized itself fully. Or perhaps felt illegitimate, and so was subconsciously squashed. It sat softly upon me, creating fatigue, but not fury. I didn’t even realize what it was until today, when I read this again. And cried.
Thanks to VTH. Feels good to put it under a category calling “healing.”