Looking back into the abyss

Ten years ago today was a very dark day. We were told that my mother, fighting against leukemia, was not going to make it home to die. I raged in the driveway as I waited for Heidi to come pick me up to take me to the Cleveland Clinic. I paced back and forth and cried and kicked things and vowed that I would hate Tuesdays and I would hate June 9th for the rest of my life. Looming before me was a thick blackness, a choking smog of grief, and I was so afraid of it. I was terrified of that dark place. My mom didn't die until the next morning, the 10th, but I had already spent all my scorn and despair on the 9th. Tomorrow's post is going to be about joy. About my mother's life, her death, and her eternal life that she is enjoying now. But today, I need to look back into that place. I am in the place that I wanted desperately to be ten years ago. A decade away from the darkness, I hoped that the balm of time would take the edge off the pain, and I wanted to skip all of the work involved and fast-forward to now.

So, Allyson, how are things ten years later?

Well, my mom is still dead. It's not like we just have to make it through a little while and then we get her back for good behavior. She's still gone, and instead of having seen her just yesterday, I haven't seen her for ten long years. I haven't heard her voice or smelled her smell or touched her hands. So in that respect it's worse. It's been longer since I've seen her, so I miss her more. That dark, suffocating abyss is not so close anymore, not so imminent. I see it out there in the distance, looking behind me over my shoulder. I've gone through that terrible place, and by the grace of God, who carried me through, it is behind me. This is not to say, however, that sometimes grief does not sneak up on me, knock me over from behind and try to strangle the breath out of me. That happens a lot, actually, and it's triggered by the weirdest things. Baby bean plants, up from seeds I planted a week ago, like a magic trick, a something from nothing–that killed me yesterday, I don't know why. Things get tangled up together in my mind, and connections form that don't seem to make sense. I cried all through the service yesterday at church. I was just broken open, like a melon.

Cleaning out the basement last week, I found this poem I wrote for a creative writing class in college while my mom was sick. At the time, we still hoped she would recover, so it is poignant for that reason alone. Reading it took my breath away–it's intense. I'm not claiming that it is a fantastic poem. In fact, my professor wrote: "Maybe you should revisit this when you're not so close to the situation," probably meaning that it was pretty bad. Well, so it is, but it captured that time so perfectly, and I want to post it here. Warning;  Intensity alert. I just need people to read this.

Leukemia: a Sestina

Waiting for the time to pass, the woman watches blood

drip into her body as she lies twisted in the bed.

And her eyes say, "Let me live or die,

because what I'm doing now is neither

Life nor Death, but only pain and fear."

And all of us together pray, "Yes, let her live."

 

People have brought her flowers, living

reminders of a time before her blood

snagged us up in a net of fear

and chained her weeping to an adjustable bed.

But she deosn't want cut flowers, that neither

grow nor thrive, but slowly softly die.

 

For she has no intention to slowly, softly die.

No hothouse dainty, she clutches her life

with teeth and nails. She will neigher

wilt nor tremble for the poison bleeding

through her veins. Pale and yellow in the bed,

she tosses dry flowers out with her fear.

 

I watch the man who loves her, I watch him, fearful

but breaking with every tender smile into hope. Die?

She? Die? No, not here, not here in this single bed

with rumpled sheets and unwashed hair. Life

surges within him and he will share it all, bleed

into her soul his very essence, that neither

 

pain nor death can sully. Weeping neither

then nor now, his desert eyes mask doubt and fear,

while he watches humbling compassion, stranger's blood,

do what he cannot. With city daylight dying

through the slatted blinds, he worries about life

crowded with endless nights in single beds.

 

She, swollen and pink, a bloated raisin, bedded

and waiting, breathes and mumbles. She can neither

assure nor comfort us, we who plead for one yet living.

We wait.  We breathe. We mumble against our fears,

chanting our hopes, our prayers, our litanies against dying.

And always in the background, the dripping of blood,

 

the pulsing of hospital beds, the metallic taste of fear,

the hope that neither triumphs nor dies,

and we, the living, who watch her bleed.

 

 

I was just this kid, this 22-year-old kid to whom nothing bad had ever really happened, and I thought, that because I was me, she wouldn't die. I was wrong. Being me made no difference, and it took me many years to realize at last that her illness and death was not actually about me. I know, how dense could I be?

Today, on this day I vowed I would hate for the rest of my life, I have mixed feelings. I remember that frantic girl in the driveway, and I can conjure up those emotions any time I want. (i don't want). But I can also wander around my garden, watering my baby plants, touching my silken pink roses climbing up the chimney, brushing my hands against the sage, whose fragrance gives me joy and hope, and I can smile, and cry and find much joy. So ten years later is ok. I'm still crying. I'm still missing her so much that I can't stand it. But those magic beans, those roses, the songs we sang at church, and the friends who hold me up–these things make it ok.

And it's not going to be forever, you know? Just until it's my turn to go further up and further in.