New Installment: Ghost Chapters From The Green Books #10
Still - May Seventeenth, Twenty/Twenty
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Read the latest installment of the Ghost Chapters From The Green Books, #10 Below, or listen to me read it on the new audio version above. Just hit the arrow to play…
“Still - May Seventeenth, Twenty/Twenty:
Your growing story of not being here only goes in one direction - longer each day. One day it will be longer than the story of you being here and being mine, and somehow I have to live through this. Tell me how. New May days with brighter, warmer air are actually more frightening. I don’t want to wake in the mornings to live in this fading story, as your death is swallowed into the bigger story of eighty-seven thousand other pairs of American lungs that have failed in this pandemic so far.
My nails are so bitten this morning that my fingertips are numb as I hold the pen. Today it is five days before the new moon, and as Mark instructed, I will plant the grass seed with the special spiked tool he loaned me. Tomorrow we are set to have the first storm of the hurricane season with four solid days of downpour.
I manage bank accounts, file papers, organize the impossible refinance of your house, pay past bills, cancel phone lines, call the bank who stalks the house hungrily watching us, scotch-taping little notes to the front door: “Do you still occupy the property? Please call us immediately!” Every two weeks or so I clean the house, list the house for summer rental, show the house on video tours, and in person in a mask. I mow the lawn, the lawnmower breaks; I vacuum, your mother’s vacuum breaks. I clean the cottage, and vacuum a year’s worth of spiders and dust with the new high suction Dyson. I disassemble your art table and give more and more possessions to Richard. I weed and mulch the garden with Mark. I organize Marco to come and take the brush pile and finish the brick patio. Too expensive. I make lists. I teach my two writing groups on Zoom. I take yoga on Zoom. I practice meditation every day, and sometimes even on Zoom. I shop for groceries in gloves and a mask. I order your ashes to be returned from Stoneybrook University sometime in the next two years. They can’t say when since all the anatomy classes have stopped. I eat pre-made meals in the evenings. They come boxed and ice-packed, and arrive on the front porch every Friday. I stay in, and still you are not here. And still. And still. Each morning a marker in this rhythm. And still. And still. And still not here.
I still have your bag of pills that you left behind, a heavy cluster in the plastic bag from the hospital. I can’t put my hand inside, so I tucked it away on top of our old medicine basket on the high shelf in the pantry.
Of course I think about killing myself - who wouldn’t. Not the act, but the existence and location of those pills holds interest. Then I think about the barren days ahead, and the barren years ahead. Packed with new places, people, objects, fears, joys, projects. It’s disgusting. It feels disgusting to be living while you are not.
I’ve given Richard both of Tracy’s paintings, 3 pairs of your shoes, almost all of your art supplies, vases, tchotchkes, and this week your grandmother’s giant framed Corot print that hung in the kitchen, the pastoral landscape with cows all in sepia with that black, frilly victorian frame. That was hard. I was brittle. I broke down. I moved the Hamilton King seascape from its usual spot over your desk and put it into the empty spot in the kitchen. Richard’s fingers try to take a smaller Hamilton King from the hall. I gasp, and he lets go. He texts me that, by the way, his mother wants one of your dress shirts, preferably one with cufflink holes in the sleeves. Oh, and he wants the gold cat-eye cufflinks too.
What if there is no story here? What if I can’t write? What if every love story feels just as important as ours, and this just isn’t big enough? Am I really old enough to write a memoir? Yes. Should I kill myself today? Undecided. Will this pregnant couple rent the house, and will I have to put a washer/dryer unit into your waiting room?
Maybe by nightfall I’ll know again that you are only one step across the line. One glimmer through the glass. I want my new road to open, a way into this new place where you might hang out. I want my psilocybin road to begin. But I still have no idea how to get any of the precious mushrooms, or how to get Ian the shaman all the way out East in the middle of lockdown.”
"Then I think about the barren days ahead, and the barren years ahead. Packed with new places, people, objects, fears, joys, projects. It’s disgusting. It feels disgusting to be living while you are not." The angst I'm feeling here is palpable. This is so real and raw, Kara. Like you always tell me, I want more.
Oh I forgot to say that I loved the voiceover!