The First Six Months of Survival
Allyson Whipple
January
Grief, when it comes, is nothing what we expect it to be.
The customary greeting of the day settles on my tongue, but I can’t force it from behind my teeth. My lips start to form the word “Happy,” but then they stop. None of my upbringing has ever prepared me for greeting the terminally ill on a day when there is supposed to be so much optimism.
Part of my brain tells me that I should say it anyway, because that’s the polite thing to do. But on Christmas Eve, your mother told me that the tumor in your liver is growing again, and that it can’t be treated until your kidneys can work without dialysis. You have been tenacious, but I can’t help but feel pessimistic.
We haven’t had happy news since your daughter was born. Except that was also the day we found out your cancer was back. So I hope you can forgive me, that I don’t say what I’m supposed to. I can’t say what doesn’t feel genuine.
But I can say “Hello.” I can ask, “How are you feeling?,” even though that feels gauche. Surgery. Chemo. Radiation. Six industrial-grade painkillers. Three IVs. A breathing tube. Six months of steroid injections. Kidney failure. Dialysis. And now, the liver tumor growing back.
“I’m down to dialysis twice a week.”
I almost say “Happy New Year,” because soon, your kidneys could work again. Soon, you could get chemo for your liver. Still, I don’t say it. If I wish you a happy new year, I might jinx this marginal progress.
We don’t get much time to talk before your doctor comes in. “What is your pain level? Have you been able to eat? How are your bowel movements?” A few months ago, the last question would have made me blush, but I’ve become desensitized.
“Your kidneys are doing better. You’re getting stronger. I’m pleased.” His words are clipped by his accent. I like the simplicity of his statements. I like how straightforward he is. “Maybe soon, we can stop dialysis.”
Your energy starts to flag after he leaves. So I sit and hold your hand, noticing that the swelling is going down, the fluid buildup from the steroids slowly leaking out of your system. My eyes flit between the rise and fall of your chest, and the readouts on the monitors. I can’t always decipher their code, but I know that right now, you’re stable.
After an hour of sitting and watching, I need to leave. You wake up as I’m gathering my things.
“I’m sorry I have to take off. I love you.”
This is easy to say. I can’t wish you a good year, because I know even if you recover, even if the signs are improving, you’re going to have a long road of misery ahead. I can’t do anything to save you. But I can love you.
“I love you, too.”
I’m almost out the door when you call out, “I’m sorry I fell asleep.”
You’ve been sorry for so many things that aren’t your fault: losing control of bodily functions, losing lucidity, not spending time with your daughter, not working on your writing. There are times when you’ve felt guilty for being so sick. But I can’t brush off these notions of yours, because I know that if our roles were reversed, I’d feel the same way.
Nothing I can say will ameliorate your feelings. All I can do is hope that the truth eases your mind, at least for a few hours.
“I’m grateful for any time I get to spend with you.”
Twelve days later, I’m in the parking lot at work, trying to decide whether to vomit or to just stop breathing entirely. For all the time I’ve spent bracing myself, warning myself, I’m surprisingly unprepared.
On the phone, your mother tells me I should come to the hospital to see them. To see you. I get lost on the way, even though I have driven there almost every Sunday for eight months. It should be muscle memory by now, but my arms can barely remember how to steer a car. Navigation is lost on me.
Your body is room temperature, but feels colder when I actually touch it. Your parents and step-parents and brother and daughter are there. I sit in a corner and hold your hand, the way I did the last time I saw you alive, the last time your skin was warm in mine.
I lament that there are no photos of you and me together. Your stepmother is the kind of woman to find a solution to every problem. “Oh, honey, you can just use Photoshop,” she tells me, with a thick drawl.
I keep sitting, looking into your still-open eyes. The family hurries around doing things, gathering your possessions, making arrangements. I offer to help, but I’m useless. I can’t contact funeral homes. I can’t arrange for cremation. I can’t sign paperwork. All I can do is sit.
Your glasses are inches away from my shoulder, and I have the impulse to steal them, to take a part of you with me. I sit on my hand, because I don’t trust myself.
After an hour, you’re still dead, and I’m still helpless. I hug your family goodbye, and go to dinner with my sister, as we planned a week ago. She tells me we can reschedule, but I need to eat. I need food. I need wine. I need a place in this world.
February
I tried to suggest that the best one can do in a situation such as ours is to get on with it. I believe that.
What I failed to calculate is the pain that increases even as one gets on with it.
I try to get on with it.
I go to work because I have to. There is no bereavement leave at my job, and even if there was, they wouldn’t give it to me, because you weren’t family. As though the lack of blood or marriage mitigates how much I love you.
I sulk on the sidelines when I go out dancing. It’s taken so much effort to just show up, and I have no energy to do more than watch. Still, I show up, even if my attitude is off-putting. Those who know, those who care, forgive me week after week for my lack of grace.
I take a break from writing, but it doesn’t last more than three days. There are words swarming in my head, and they need to go somewhere. I’m also haunted by the thoughts of all the stories sitting unfinished on your computer. I think of all the ideas that slipped through your mind, that you never got to even jot down on paper. I owe it to you to keep up with my work.
I write sonnets and villanelles. I need structure. I need rhythm. I need form. I need control. But no matter what, I write. I send out work. I don’t stop, because I can’t stop. For all I know, I’ll die of a brain aneurysm next week. For all I know, I’ll get cancer, too. My own mortality becomes a taskmaster. I don’t fear death itself, but I fear never achieving my dreams before the end.
When working and dancing and writing don’t make the pain go away, I press on anyway, because I am supposed to get on with it. I push myself when I hurt. I push myself when I’m tired. I push myself when I know I need a break, because I need to get on with it.
When I wake up one morning with inexplicable heartburn, I brush off the idea that something could be wrong. I go to work. I eat, even though I’m not hungry. I fight exhaustion and the feeling that my abdomen is going to burst into flames. I go dancing, even though I need to take a break after every song. I can barely drag myself home. I read this, but refuse to believe that it could apply to me.
I refuse to believe I’m sick. I can’t be sick. Being sick means stopping. It means rest. It means not getting on with it.
The next morning, I have to believe I’m sick. There’s a mess of bad bacteria wreaking havoc on my intestines. I get put on a heavy round of Cipro. Just as soon as I am feeling better, my body has a bad reaction to the antibiotics. Once that’s out of my system, I start developing small cysts on the insides of my eyelids. Once those clear up, a cold sore blooms on my lip.
I feel guilty for getting sick, because I should be healthy and getting on with it.
I feel guilty when my body insists that I stop trying to get on with it.
March
We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. [. . .]
We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the
care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know [. . . ] the unending absence that follows, the void,
the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of
meaninglessness itself.
The second week of March is supposed to be uplifting. The 15th marks the day in 2010 when I was hit by a car, and survived. You were first diagnosed with cancer two days after my accident. We both had a year of pain and recovery (though I feel guilty for comparing my ER visit, my stitches, my dental work, to you surgery, your suffering).
We lived, and a year later, we celebrated, even though we knew something was wrong, that the pain in your hip and your back wasn’t just your baby sitting at the wrong angle inside your body.
Three weeks after that anniversary, we found out that your cancer was back with a vengeance, and your daughter was born and--
Less than a year after that, you were gone.
My celebration is muted this year. My husband and I go out to dinner. I share thoughts and gratitude with a few friends. All the while feeling guilty that I am still alive.
I feel perversely hopeful about your impending memorial. I believe that this event will be the end point of my grief. When everyone who loved you is together, when we can share our stories, where we can celebrate—this will be the catharsis. This will mean that the worst of it is over. I will still miss you, of course, but I will be able to get on with it.
I bring a loaf of bread for the reception, and feel guilty that I never brought your husband a pot of soup, or a casserole, or lasagna. I remember that I brought pasta salad after your first surgery. Vichysoisse after your daughter was born. After your death, though, I did not do my duty in helping to care for your family.
I feel guilty that I have been too tired to do what I was supposed to do. I feel guilty for grieving as though you were my sister, and requiring the care and support of others, when I should have been the support system.
When we share stories about you, I want to tell everyone about the car accident and your diagnosis. I want to tell everyone how I thought we would survive together. That for a while, we were survivors together. But I can’t, because it feels wrong to talk about my own survival, to testify that I lived.
I am starting to understand why my father took out his camera at memorials, especially at the receptions. This was a practice I found strange and upsetting when I was a child. Who would want to remember that grief? But now it makes sense. We can’t take pictures of you anymore, but we can take pictures of us celebrating you, and loving you.
Everyone at the memorial is given a small urn with your ashes, and we’re all instructed to scatter them somewhere. I have never been in possession of a loved one’s ashes before. I secretly swear that I will never scatter them, that I will keep you with me forever.
One week later, it is your daughter’s birthday. All I can think about is how much she looks like you. At the party, I take photos, and absentmindedly think that I will visit the hospital later and show them to you. Sometimes, I still forget that you’re not in limbo anymore.
April
We are taught to feel shame about grief that lingers. Like a stain on our clothes, it marks us as flawed, imperfect.
To cling to grief, to desire its expression, is to be out of sync with modern life, where the hip do not get bogged down in mourning.
I feel as though people are starting to lose patience with me. I don’t blame them, because I am starting to lose patience with me. I feel as though I should be over this by now. The memorial did nothing to end my grief. It did nothing to bring me closure. In fact, I miss you even more than I did before. I am still distant with friends. I shirk responsibilities.
On my birthday, we play poker. I learned to play poker at your house, on Friday nights. I wish you were here playing with us. Your husband and son are here. My closest friends are here, all except for you, who will never be here again.
When you were alive, cancer kept you from my birthday parties. My biggest regret is that we will never celebrate more life together.
When I win, I wonder if maybe you are here. You were such a good poker player. I wasn’t.
But if you want me to believe in ghosts, you’re going to have to give me more evidence than one winning poker game.
May
Much of our cultural suspicion of grief is rooted in the fear that the unleashing of such passion will overtake us and keep us from
life. However, this fear is usually misguided. In its deepest sense, grief is a burning of the heart, an intense heat that gives us
solace and release. When we deny the full expression of our grief, it lays like a weight on our hearts, causing emotional pain
and physical ailments. Grief is most often unrelenting when individuals are not reconciled to the reality of loss.
I attend the poetry festival at Round Top, and Naomi Shihab Nye gives the last reading on Saturday night. She is accompanied by guitar and electric viola. I let myself drown in sound. I let myself get choked up on her words. I let myself miss you and mourn you without guilt. I let myself cry in front of strangers.
It’s “Chico Brothers Fruit & Vegetable #2” that really gets to me. The music drops, then swells, then recedes, the crescendos. And her voice brings to me grief, the way grief makes us sometimes into fools. And then she cries the closing line, Come back, come back, and my heart calls out to you, Come back, come back, come back, come back, come back.
Back in my room, I read “Chico Brothers Fruit & Vegetable #2” over and over, and sob. This is the first time I have cried since your memorial, and now I am crying harder, louder. I couldn’t get it all out in January. I couldn’t get it all out in March. Now, though, I think I am getting to the bottom of things.
After this catharsis, I believe that it’s over. I think that now, I must have moved on, that life will be normal again. I have even decided that once I figure out the right place, I will scatter your ashes.
While cleaning my room two weeks later, I find some books you had loaned me a year and a half ago, when you were still well. Books that I needed to research a novel that ended up getting trunked.
I am sorry that I misplaced them and never returned them.
I am sorry that I never finished writing that novel.
Etiquette confounds me yet again. Do I call your husband and ask if he would like them back?
I put them with the rest of my books in my closet. After all, I don’t have your glasses. Eventually, I won’t have your ashes. This is the part of you I get to keep.
June
If this is your birthday and you are dead, do we stay silent as the sheet you died under? No. You always talked.
It is June 11th. It is your birthday. You are dead. I feel too quiet.
Above all, I miss listening when you talked. I miss reading your stories. I miss having you tell me what was wrong with mine.
I spend more time hiding in the words of others, letting writers tell me of their grief, whispering Yes, yes, yes to the pages.
I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are
to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead. Love is the only force
that allows us to hold one another close beyond the grave. But in the time since she died, I have been aware, every minute,
of my love for her. She lives in my love.
I have decided to scatter your ashes in New Orleans, because when you had the chance to go, you were already too sick to travel.
Maybe I will scatter you on the river. Maybe in the French Quarter. Maybe somewhere haunted. I will fill the urn with dried rosemary, for remembrance.
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
It is your birthday, and my life goes on as usual. The sun is setting, and I’m driving to my poetry group. The hospital where you fought for your life is on the way; it’s only recently that I’ve stopped accidentally pulling off at that exit, forgetting that I’m not on the way to visit you.
There are some things that I can’t forget, though. Such as the way your window was positioned so I could look out and watch the cars on the freeway while you slept. Even though I proceed on to my correct exit, and even though I know I should keep my eyes forward, I turn to look toward that window, as though there might be some evidence of you, as though I might see a sign that you’re really alive.
How many times will I drive past the hospital without craning my neck to check your room? How many times will I drive past the hospital before I stop remembering that this is the place where you died?
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)
Notes
Epigraphs and in-text quotations come from the following sources:
cummings, e.e. “[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in].” Poetry Foundation. 20 August 2012.
Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking. New York: Knopf, 2005
hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow, 2001.
Rosenblatt, Richard. “Kayak Morning.” The Kenyon Review 34.1 (2012): 18-45.
Shihab Nye, Naomi. “Cinco De Mayo.” Transfer. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2011. 101.
Grief, when it comes, is nothing what we expect it to be.
The customary greeting of the day settles on my tongue, but I can’t force it from behind my teeth. My lips start to form the word “Happy,” but then they stop. None of my upbringing has ever prepared me for greeting the terminally ill on a day when there is supposed to be so much optimism.
Part of my brain tells me that I should say it anyway, because that’s the polite thing to do. But on Christmas Eve, your mother told me that the tumor in your liver is growing again, and that it can’t be treated until your kidneys can work without dialysis. You have been tenacious, but I can’t help but feel pessimistic.
We haven’t had happy news since your daughter was born. Except that was also the day we found out your cancer was back. So I hope you can forgive me, that I don’t say what I’m supposed to. I can’t say what doesn’t feel genuine.
But I can say “Hello.” I can ask, “How are you feeling?,” even though that feels gauche. Surgery. Chemo. Radiation. Six industrial-grade painkillers. Three IVs. A breathing tube. Six months of steroid injections. Kidney failure. Dialysis. And now, the liver tumor growing back.
“I’m down to dialysis twice a week.”
I almost say “Happy New Year,” because soon, your kidneys could work again. Soon, you could get chemo for your liver. Still, I don’t say it. If I wish you a happy new year, I might jinx this marginal progress.
We don’t get much time to talk before your doctor comes in. “What is your pain level? Have you been able to eat? How are your bowel movements?” A few months ago, the last question would have made me blush, but I’ve become desensitized.
“Your kidneys are doing better. You’re getting stronger. I’m pleased.” His words are clipped by his accent. I like the simplicity of his statements. I like how straightforward he is. “Maybe soon, we can stop dialysis.”
Your energy starts to flag after he leaves. So I sit and hold your hand, noticing that the swelling is going down, the fluid buildup from the steroids slowly leaking out of your system. My eyes flit between the rise and fall of your chest, and the readouts on the monitors. I can’t always decipher their code, but I know that right now, you’re stable.
After an hour of sitting and watching, I need to leave. You wake up as I’m gathering my things.
“I’m sorry I have to take off. I love you.”
This is easy to say. I can’t wish you a good year, because I know even if you recover, even if the signs are improving, you’re going to have a long road of misery ahead. I can’t do anything to save you. But I can love you.
“I love you, too.”
I’m almost out the door when you call out, “I’m sorry I fell asleep.”
You’ve been sorry for so many things that aren’t your fault: losing control of bodily functions, losing lucidity, not spending time with your daughter, not working on your writing. There are times when you’ve felt guilty for being so sick. But I can’t brush off these notions of yours, because I know that if our roles were reversed, I’d feel the same way.
Nothing I can say will ameliorate your feelings. All I can do is hope that the truth eases your mind, at least for a few hours.
“I’m grateful for any time I get to spend with you.”
Twelve days later, I’m in the parking lot at work, trying to decide whether to vomit or to just stop breathing entirely. For all the time I’ve spent bracing myself, warning myself, I’m surprisingly unprepared.
On the phone, your mother tells me I should come to the hospital to see them. To see you. I get lost on the way, even though I have driven there almost every Sunday for eight months. It should be muscle memory by now, but my arms can barely remember how to steer a car. Navigation is lost on me.
Your body is room temperature, but feels colder when I actually touch it. Your parents and step-parents and brother and daughter are there. I sit in a corner and hold your hand, the way I did the last time I saw you alive, the last time your skin was warm in mine.
I lament that there are no photos of you and me together. Your stepmother is the kind of woman to find a solution to every problem. “Oh, honey, you can just use Photoshop,” she tells me, with a thick drawl.
I keep sitting, looking into your still-open eyes. The family hurries around doing things, gathering your possessions, making arrangements. I offer to help, but I’m useless. I can’t contact funeral homes. I can’t arrange for cremation. I can’t sign paperwork. All I can do is sit.
Your glasses are inches away from my shoulder, and I have the impulse to steal them, to take a part of you with me. I sit on my hand, because I don’t trust myself.
After an hour, you’re still dead, and I’m still helpless. I hug your family goodbye, and go to dinner with my sister, as we planned a week ago. She tells me we can reschedule, but I need to eat. I need food. I need wine. I need a place in this world.
February
I tried to suggest that the best one can do in a situation such as ours is to get on with it. I believe that.
What I failed to calculate is the pain that increases even as one gets on with it.
I try to get on with it.
I go to work because I have to. There is no bereavement leave at my job, and even if there was, they wouldn’t give it to me, because you weren’t family. As though the lack of blood or marriage mitigates how much I love you.
I sulk on the sidelines when I go out dancing. It’s taken so much effort to just show up, and I have no energy to do more than watch. Still, I show up, even if my attitude is off-putting. Those who know, those who care, forgive me week after week for my lack of grace.
I take a break from writing, but it doesn’t last more than three days. There are words swarming in my head, and they need to go somewhere. I’m also haunted by the thoughts of all the stories sitting unfinished on your computer. I think of all the ideas that slipped through your mind, that you never got to even jot down on paper. I owe it to you to keep up with my work.
I write sonnets and villanelles. I need structure. I need rhythm. I need form. I need control. But no matter what, I write. I send out work. I don’t stop, because I can’t stop. For all I know, I’ll die of a brain aneurysm next week. For all I know, I’ll get cancer, too. My own mortality becomes a taskmaster. I don’t fear death itself, but I fear never achieving my dreams before the end.
When working and dancing and writing don’t make the pain go away, I press on anyway, because I am supposed to get on with it. I push myself when I hurt. I push myself when I’m tired. I push myself when I know I need a break, because I need to get on with it.
When I wake up one morning with inexplicable heartburn, I brush off the idea that something could be wrong. I go to work. I eat, even though I’m not hungry. I fight exhaustion and the feeling that my abdomen is going to burst into flames. I go dancing, even though I need to take a break after every song. I can barely drag myself home. I read this, but refuse to believe that it could apply to me.
I refuse to believe I’m sick. I can’t be sick. Being sick means stopping. It means rest. It means not getting on with it.
The next morning, I have to believe I’m sick. There’s a mess of bad bacteria wreaking havoc on my intestines. I get put on a heavy round of Cipro. Just as soon as I am feeling better, my body has a bad reaction to the antibiotics. Once that’s out of my system, I start developing small cysts on the insides of my eyelids. Once those clear up, a cold sore blooms on my lip.
I feel guilty for getting sick, because I should be healthy and getting on with it.
I feel guilty when my body insists that I stop trying to get on with it.
March
We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. [. . .]
We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the
care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know [. . . ] the unending absence that follows, the void,
the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of
meaninglessness itself.
The second week of March is supposed to be uplifting. The 15th marks the day in 2010 when I was hit by a car, and survived. You were first diagnosed with cancer two days after my accident. We both had a year of pain and recovery (though I feel guilty for comparing my ER visit, my stitches, my dental work, to you surgery, your suffering).
We lived, and a year later, we celebrated, even though we knew something was wrong, that the pain in your hip and your back wasn’t just your baby sitting at the wrong angle inside your body.
Three weeks after that anniversary, we found out that your cancer was back with a vengeance, and your daughter was born and--
Less than a year after that, you were gone.
My celebration is muted this year. My husband and I go out to dinner. I share thoughts and gratitude with a few friends. All the while feeling guilty that I am still alive.
I feel perversely hopeful about your impending memorial. I believe that this event will be the end point of my grief. When everyone who loved you is together, when we can share our stories, where we can celebrate—this will be the catharsis. This will mean that the worst of it is over. I will still miss you, of course, but I will be able to get on with it.
I bring a loaf of bread for the reception, and feel guilty that I never brought your husband a pot of soup, or a casserole, or lasagna. I remember that I brought pasta salad after your first surgery. Vichysoisse after your daughter was born. After your death, though, I did not do my duty in helping to care for your family.
I feel guilty that I have been too tired to do what I was supposed to do. I feel guilty for grieving as though you were my sister, and requiring the care and support of others, when I should have been the support system.
When we share stories about you, I want to tell everyone about the car accident and your diagnosis. I want to tell everyone how I thought we would survive together. That for a while, we were survivors together. But I can’t, because it feels wrong to talk about my own survival, to testify that I lived.
I am starting to understand why my father took out his camera at memorials, especially at the receptions. This was a practice I found strange and upsetting when I was a child. Who would want to remember that grief? But now it makes sense. We can’t take pictures of you anymore, but we can take pictures of us celebrating you, and loving you.
Everyone at the memorial is given a small urn with your ashes, and we’re all instructed to scatter them somewhere. I have never been in possession of a loved one’s ashes before. I secretly swear that I will never scatter them, that I will keep you with me forever.
One week later, it is your daughter’s birthday. All I can think about is how much she looks like you. At the party, I take photos, and absentmindedly think that I will visit the hospital later and show them to you. Sometimes, I still forget that you’re not in limbo anymore.
April
We are taught to feel shame about grief that lingers. Like a stain on our clothes, it marks us as flawed, imperfect.
To cling to grief, to desire its expression, is to be out of sync with modern life, where the hip do not get bogged down in mourning.
I feel as though people are starting to lose patience with me. I don’t blame them, because I am starting to lose patience with me. I feel as though I should be over this by now. The memorial did nothing to end my grief. It did nothing to bring me closure. In fact, I miss you even more than I did before. I am still distant with friends. I shirk responsibilities.
On my birthday, we play poker. I learned to play poker at your house, on Friday nights. I wish you were here playing with us. Your husband and son are here. My closest friends are here, all except for you, who will never be here again.
When you were alive, cancer kept you from my birthday parties. My biggest regret is that we will never celebrate more life together.
When I win, I wonder if maybe you are here. You were such a good poker player. I wasn’t.
But if you want me to believe in ghosts, you’re going to have to give me more evidence than one winning poker game.
May
Much of our cultural suspicion of grief is rooted in the fear that the unleashing of such passion will overtake us and keep us from
life. However, this fear is usually misguided. In its deepest sense, grief is a burning of the heart, an intense heat that gives us
solace and release. When we deny the full expression of our grief, it lays like a weight on our hearts, causing emotional pain
and physical ailments. Grief is most often unrelenting when individuals are not reconciled to the reality of loss.
I attend the poetry festival at Round Top, and Naomi Shihab Nye gives the last reading on Saturday night. She is accompanied by guitar and electric viola. I let myself drown in sound. I let myself get choked up on her words. I let myself miss you and mourn you without guilt. I let myself cry in front of strangers.
It’s “Chico Brothers Fruit & Vegetable #2” that really gets to me. The music drops, then swells, then recedes, the crescendos. And her voice brings to me grief, the way grief makes us sometimes into fools. And then she cries the closing line, Come back, come back, and my heart calls out to you, Come back, come back, come back, come back, come back.
Back in my room, I read “Chico Brothers Fruit & Vegetable #2” over and over, and sob. This is the first time I have cried since your memorial, and now I am crying harder, louder. I couldn’t get it all out in January. I couldn’t get it all out in March. Now, though, I think I am getting to the bottom of things.
After this catharsis, I believe that it’s over. I think that now, I must have moved on, that life will be normal again. I have even decided that once I figure out the right place, I will scatter your ashes.
While cleaning my room two weeks later, I find some books you had loaned me a year and a half ago, when you were still well. Books that I needed to research a novel that ended up getting trunked.
I am sorry that I misplaced them and never returned them.
I am sorry that I never finished writing that novel.
Etiquette confounds me yet again. Do I call your husband and ask if he would like them back?
I put them with the rest of my books in my closet. After all, I don’t have your glasses. Eventually, I won’t have your ashes. This is the part of you I get to keep.
June
If this is your birthday and you are dead, do we stay silent as the sheet you died under? No. You always talked.
It is June 11th. It is your birthday. You are dead. I feel too quiet.
Above all, I miss listening when you talked. I miss reading your stories. I miss having you tell me what was wrong with mine.
I spend more time hiding in the words of others, letting writers tell me of their grief, whispering Yes, yes, yes to the pages.
I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are
to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead. Love is the only force
that allows us to hold one another close beyond the grave. But in the time since she died, I have been aware, every minute,
of my love for her. She lives in my love.
I have decided to scatter your ashes in New Orleans, because when you had the chance to go, you were already too sick to travel.
Maybe I will scatter you on the river. Maybe in the French Quarter. Maybe somewhere haunted. I will fill the urn with dried rosemary, for remembrance.
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
It is your birthday, and my life goes on as usual. The sun is setting, and I’m driving to my poetry group. The hospital where you fought for your life is on the way; it’s only recently that I’ve stopped accidentally pulling off at that exit, forgetting that I’m not on the way to visit you.
There are some things that I can’t forget, though. Such as the way your window was positioned so I could look out and watch the cars on the freeway while you slept. Even though I proceed on to my correct exit, and even though I know I should keep my eyes forward, I turn to look toward that window, as though there might be some evidence of you, as though I might see a sign that you’re really alive.
How many times will I drive past the hospital without craning my neck to check your room? How many times will I drive past the hospital before I stop remembering that this is the place where you died?
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)
Notes
Epigraphs and in-text quotations come from the following sources:
cummings, e.e. “[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in].” Poetry Foundation. 20 August 2012.
Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking. New York: Knopf, 2005
hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow, 2001.
Rosenblatt, Richard. “Kayak Morning.” The Kenyon Review 34.1 (2012): 18-45.
Shihab Nye, Naomi. “Cinco De Mayo.” Transfer. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2011. 101.
Working notes
When my friend Reesa Brown died after a long battle with cancer, I felt isolated from everything. Reesa had been a part of my writing community and one of the best critics and writers I’d ever worked with; we’d had big plans to collaborate on a project after she recovered. Plus, I’ve always been the kind of person who struggles to make friends. Forming a strong bond with Reesa gave me the kind of intimate female friendship I had desired for years. The loss of my closest friend made me feel cut off from the whole rest of the world, even though I had many loving, supportive people in my life. It was through a reader-writer dialogue with poets and writers that I was able to make sense of my grief and live without guilt. This essay reflects not just my grief process, but my engagement with the texts that carried me through the most acute months of loss. While I’m primarily a poet, I chose to work in the essay form because it allowed me the space I needed to engage not just in an epistle to Reesa, but in conversation with the texts that helped me cope and survive. Working in a less-familiar form also allowed me to think about my healing process in different ways. Rather than thinking in terms of breaks and compression, I had room to sprawl and meander, tightening up the flow of things later.
About the author
Allyson Whipple is the Director of the Austin Feminist Poetry Festival, and the author of We're Smaller Than We Think We Are (Finishing Line Press, 2013). Her work has most recently appeared in the 2014 Texas Poetry Calendar. When she's not teaching at Austin Community College or working on her next manuscript, Allyson studies Kung Fu.