A reminder for love
It is amazing that we as humans can love deeply or procreate knowing that who we love can disappear at any moment. That we are all destined for that disappearance.
We are in a constant suspension of disbelief. The fourth wall, the third, second, first, invisible as we continue to act as if we (you, I, alone) will not die.
The details are still unclear.
He received the phone call yesterday afternoon.
He spent all night at the hospital.
There is no good news.
His six month old son was at daycare and stopped breathing. At the hospital, on a respirator, his son was declared brain dead.
When word reached this boat where he has been working this summer, we collectively shuttered at the tragedy.
I am not a parent, I cannot even imagine the pain.
But I have been a daughter, a friend, a witness.
As far as I know, I have only had one near death experience: slipping, hanging from a glacier on the side of a mountain in Nepal with a rushing river beneath the snowpack deep in the valley below. As my fingers froze in the ice and my backpack grew heavier with each passing minute, all I could think of was my mom and how destroyed she would be when they found my body (maybe) when the snow melted later that summer. I was scared for myself and did everything I could to get off that goddamn glacier, but imagining how my mom would react when she found out she had lost me was more terrifying. That's when I realized the thought of the death of others is more paralyzing than the thought of one's own demise.
On scorching afternoons in Calcutta the Sisters of Charity scour the streets for men and women to bring back to the hospice at Kaligat, the cool stone floor lined with simple cots, metal trays waiting for rice and lentils to feed the starved, showers behind thick walls for the unwashed. For a time I helped scoop out meals, stirred huge vats of laundry to be rubbed clean on those same stone floors, delivered 'pani' to those who were thirsty, and just sat with women whose language I could barely understand but who didn't seem to care as they chattered on or screamed about malaria or laughed at my Bengali pronunciation, happy to to heard.
Someone noticed them. Someone took care of them.
They weren't invisible anymore, one of the multitudes dying in the fetid gutters, alone.
Some afternoons I would arrive to empty cots, the gentle face the day before already cast into the Ganges, the acrid smell of funeral pyres aflame wafting into the long hallways at teatime.
As I was learning about death, half way around the world my dad was being diagnosed with Primary Progressive Aphasia, a form of dementia that would eventually take his life five years later with its cruel theft of words, emotions, functions.
As my dad wheezed and rattled into the grave, his gauntness unfamiliar, his face burning hot when my lips touched his forehead, I could only think (hope?) that the experience was far more difficult for me (watching, feeling, wanting to say...) than for him (transitioning).
How beautiful and frustrating!
But he was thought of when he died.
Those women and men at Kaligat were not invisible as they died.
That little boy in the hospital will be deeply missed.
being noticed is the best we can hope for in death
and loving as much as we can, honoring every connection we can no matter how much it may hurt whenever it may end- due to death or change- is all we (I) can strive for in life
We are in a constant suspension of disbelief. The fourth wall, the third, second, first, invisible as we continue to act as if we (you, I, alone) will not die.
The details are still unclear.
He received the phone call yesterday afternoon.
He spent all night at the hospital.
There is no good news.
His six month old son was at daycare and stopped breathing. At the hospital, on a respirator, his son was declared brain dead.
When word reached this boat where he has been working this summer, we collectively shuttered at the tragedy.
I am not a parent, I cannot even imagine the pain.
But I have been a daughter, a friend, a witness.
As far as I know, I have only had one near death experience: slipping, hanging from a glacier on the side of a mountain in Nepal with a rushing river beneath the snowpack deep in the valley below. As my fingers froze in the ice and my backpack grew heavier with each passing minute, all I could think of was my mom and how destroyed she would be when they found my body (maybe) when the snow melted later that summer. I was scared for myself and did everything I could to get off that goddamn glacier, but imagining how my mom would react when she found out she had lost me was more terrifying. That's when I realized the thought of the death of others is more paralyzing than the thought of one's own demise.
On scorching afternoons in Calcutta the Sisters of Charity scour the streets for men and women to bring back to the hospice at Kaligat, the cool stone floor lined with simple cots, metal trays waiting for rice and lentils to feed the starved, showers behind thick walls for the unwashed. For a time I helped scoop out meals, stirred huge vats of laundry to be rubbed clean on those same stone floors, delivered 'pani' to those who were thirsty, and just sat with women whose language I could barely understand but who didn't seem to care as they chattered on or screamed about malaria or laughed at my Bengali pronunciation, happy to to heard.
Someone noticed them. Someone took care of them.
They weren't invisible anymore, one of the multitudes dying in the fetid gutters, alone.
Some afternoons I would arrive to empty cots, the gentle face the day before already cast into the Ganges, the acrid smell of funeral pyres aflame wafting into the long hallways at teatime.
As I was learning about death, half way around the world my dad was being diagnosed with Primary Progressive Aphasia, a form of dementia that would eventually take his life five years later with its cruel theft of words, emotions, functions.
As my dad wheezed and rattled into the grave, his gauntness unfamiliar, his face burning hot when my lips touched his forehead, I could only think (hope?) that the experience was far more difficult for me (watching, feeling, wanting to say...) than for him (transitioning).
How beautiful and frustrating!
But he was thought of when he died.
Those women and men at Kaligat were not invisible as they died.
That little boy in the hospital will be deeply missed.
being noticed is the best we can hope for in death
and loving as much as we can, honoring every connection we can no matter how much it may hurt whenever it may end- due to death or change- is all we (I) can strive for in life
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