^ Thomas Merton purportedly said that, and it's my favorite quotation.
I have habits that might be called morbid, but only if you accept the proposition that death is unpleasant. It started when my husband and I decided to get married. I came across a quotation by Roland Barthes that I wrote down somewhere but misplaced, something to the effect that when we fall in love, at that very moment we lose our love, that the shadow of our love's death or departure enters our life as a constant companion. Around that time I was asked by a writer friend to come to a party with a totem related to a goddess. We did several of these parties, and everyone would choose a name from a hat and trade their totem and it was like pulling a Tarot card, what you picked usually spoke to your life in some way.
For this particular party I prepared a wooden box, about five inches by four. Inside I placed a plastic figure of a woman in a puffy dress, the kind you might find on a wedding cake. I wrapped her in a gauzy piece of fabric, a sample of the dress that was then being sewn for my wedding, and mounted her in the box, which I'd painted black, with a pin in her back, so that she seemed to be floating in the box. The outside of the box I painted gold, and I wrote the Barthes quotation on the inside of the lid of the box. I took another sample of gauzy silk, this time a very loose weave, and pulled at the threads until they became uneven and left holes pocking the swatch, and I attached this over the doll like a veil, so that she looked dreamy and indistinct. The goddess was Arachne. I put so much of myself into this amazing box; it was very effective, and I didn't want to give it away, but I didn't want to go against the spirit of the event and deny the power of this totem to the person destined for it. Someone I had never met before pulled my name from the hat, and I've never seen her since, and do not know her name.
During this period of my engagement to my husband, I would look at my beloved and burst into tears at times.
It still happens. Suddenly the air changes and I drift outside the circle of my family and seem to be watching us from the future, after one of us has died. It feels like a spontaneous feature of living among loved ones, this phenomenon. Another of these habits related to living with death at my shoulder is that I sometimes find myself composing a eulogy in my head for H, or a family member, or friend. Not always, but often I do this while lying awake in the middle of the night. Sometimes I jot down some notes, but they're not organized and I'd have to start over if I did want to write a eulogy of anyone. I make mental lists of all the musicians I'd invite to play at H's funeral, or worry about how I'd get into his computer to dig out all his art work so I could display it at his memorial. This may be a perversion of the perfectly human wish-that-the-loved-one-would-die, but I don't think so. I think it's a love practice, and makes the days go more mindfully. It wouldn't be a bad idea, actually, if we all eulogized each other really nicely on an annual basis or something.
If I die tomorrow, I want it known that my life is pretty much the way I dreamed it might be. Amid all the planning and yearning and looking forward, if I take stock, this is it: home, family, art, beauty, community, friendship, the downy woodpecker that finally came to sample the suet we put out a week ago, after his first visit, hoping he would come back and add color and variety to our row of hemlocks.
Death approves.
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10 comments:
This makes me think a lot. Still thinking. Words later...
Remember the film "Waking Ned", ten years ago, about the tiny Irish village where a dead man wins the lottery and they conspire to collect in his name and divide it up? I think often of the scene at the dead man's funeral, where the lottery inspector man shows up just as our hero is about to speak the dead man's name. Hero improvises on the name of his fellow conspirator, sitting in the front row:
"Michael O'Sullivan was my great friend. But I don't ever remember telling him that. The words that are spoken at a funeral are spoken too late for the man who is dead. What a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral. To sit at the front and hear what was said, maybe say a few things yourself. Michael and I grew old together. But at times, when we laughed, we grew young. If he was here now, if he could hear what I say, I'd congratulate him on being a great man, and thank him for being a friend."
Yes! I did see that movie. Did you memorize that speech, udge?
Not word-for-word, but the meaning has certainly stayed with me. I was close enough, that I could find it on www.imdb.com, which has a "search by quotation" feature.
I meant to say earlier, the description of your totem box sent a shiver of delight up my spine. It sounds worthy of Joseph Cornell.
A hush descends on the room at that name...
Is that good or bad? I like Joseph Cornell's work, I find (many of) his boxes deeply moving. They work for me as intense-emotion-generators, even if I'd be hard pushed to name a specific emotion.
It would greatly surprise me to hear that somebody with the sensibility to create such a box, would not respond favourably to JC.
Yes, udge, I meant a hush of reverence. I love the boxes, we have a book about Cornell and I love his film Rose Hobar as well.
Rose Hobart, I meant.
Lucky red. I would love to see Rose Hobart some time, I only know it from stills & descriptions.
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