zugzwang

Dear K-

I’m sorry to hear of your loss. I know that’s what is always murmured when one loses a loved one, but I mean it sincerely. I am sorry.

I haven’t been around lately, even though I haven’t gone anywhere. I’m just not here, in the sense of that I am not really living but I am merely killing time. The days have been like leaves, and I’ve been watching them slowly turn and wither until they drop away one by one into the muddy creek bed below. But what can one do when one knows she inevitably must up and move again. No point in drawing connections, no point in looking to join any clubs or organizations, no point in tying yourself to anything here. Just live day to day and do your job well until the day you leave.

Sometimes I think about death, but I try not to do it often. More frequently I think about aging and that actually tends to upset me more. Every day I see patients who are reaching the end of their lives and they tell me how they don’t move fast anymore or they aren’t happy or their spouse is gone and it’s lonely in the nursing home. They tell me about how everything I have and enjoy will eventually go away: your mobility, your independence, the people you love. It all goes away. I hold their hand and I feel their weight sway hard against my forearm as I help them walk about the office. Usually I have to stoop over to support them and they comment about how I won’t be so tall once I begin to age and I won’t be able to wear heels anymore. Sometimes when they press against me I feel like they would collapse, their bones would crumble into dust were I to step away and let go. To think that someday I will be in that state is incredibly upsetting. I try not to imagine how miserable I will be when I am old.

So perhaps, in a way, maybe some people enjoy death. Maybe they prefer it rather than to postpone the inevitable and prolong the pain of being alive. That being said, I’m still sorry for your loss. I still imagine most people would prefer not to die.

Try to stay on solid ground for the next few days. Don’t tread on soft soil.
-K

This Is Heaven

Dear K,

We dream of a field. Green grass stretches to the horizon. And we walk up stone steps out onto the field. But there in gentle sunlight filtering through white clouds and sleepy breezes are all our friends and family, and there we laugh and giggle and gallop as we did when we were young and innocent.

We run and jump screaming from the joy of it all. Old faces and friends we never saw again.

This is my dearest wish when I die.

I wish to hold the hand of my beloved as one of dies, and know that I will see her again soon.

I'm going to say this at my grandfather's funeral.

K

Dear K,

The next day after I wrote you we had a wedding shower for my sister. My grandpa was supposed to come.

After the shower we went over to his house.

He had died in his sleep. He was a really good man who earned his rest.

,
K

What do you think about when you think about death?

Dear K,

Another one of my family members died this week. It was my Grandmother's brother. He died of an aneurysm. Apparently it runs in my family.

I've always thought, or known somehow, that I am going to die young. Somehow, with the death of this man that I barely knew, this has become more sure.

I think about my friends and what they will say.

But mostly I think about my last words. So here are they are in case I die before the morning comes.

Thank you. I'd like to say thank you to everyone here, and everyone who couldn't make it. Sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, thank you.

I feel my heart beat too fast sometimes. I feel the wind on my arms, and up the back of my neck. I feel something calling me, a great pulse, and I am leaving you now. I'm taking everything with me though. The great tragedies and romances I left unwritten on the page. The jokes I never told and the hugs I never gave.

I want to be cremated. Please throw some whiskey in with the fire and let me drift up in the air.

I always believed in Jesus, somewhere deep down, I believed in redemption.

Redeem me.

Goodnight,

K