Comfort Of The Dark - 6/28/20
Because your hip can’t make the trip up the steep attic stairs anymore at night, we make the great migration from the living room couch to the guest room. I carry all of your pills and lotions, books and papers and clipboard, phone and cords in the long-handled basket. And then I lie down next to you and read out loud from Emmet. I do my ‘world weather’ from my phone, scrolling through and telling you what the temperature is in New York, Rhinebeck, Palermo, Savannah, Las Vegas, St. Petersburg, Angouleme, Cairo, or Tunis. I use my softest weathercaster, sleepmaster voice, and I add some visual details to each place. I stay tightly next to you. I don’t want to leave you to the dark. I stay until you drop down into medicated sleep, and then I make the steep flight alone.
Do you know why I don’t sleep with you in the guest room downstairs? Why I don’t, even when you gently ask? When I want to? When I know I should? Because I have nowhere to go to escape your dying. Not even a tiny pocket of safety, or the warm glow of a pill. Because the bed is too small. Because I am so, so tired of trying to keep you alive. Because I need uninterrupted sleep in order to wake up and do it all again the next day. We were sure you would be able to climb the stairs again when you were well, weren’t we? I am not sure you will ever forgive me for this.
Yesterday and all last night a summer storm rolls through in waves. I’m up at 4:00 AM with dawn and birdsong and the wet heat. I move the little fan from your desk to blow across my bed in the guest room. When I turn the lamp on in your office the yellow light spills down the wood floor in the hall, and slices underneath the bed. That’s the light you asked me to leave on during your awful nights in this room. The comfort of light, especially golden, but even the blue spill from my phone makes me feel real.
These days I am feverishly preparing for the comfort of the dark in my dream studies. I wear a blackout mask while I meditate with my eyes open. You wouldn’t believe all the light I am finding there. But there is no real comfort yet without you. There is fury, and the page.
Here’s some crazy shit, Nick. There are parts of my journal that I don’t want to share. Yesterday morning in Zoom class I found some of my light. I danced it into a sphere nine feet around me. Apparently that is the size of it, according to my teacher, Siri Rishi. I chant, tuning into her voice. I see my true self as that clear, glowing nine-foot sphere. This stuff is so fruity, and so intimate. My dancing, whirling self glimmering inside the parameters of the light. Just like Glinda arriving in Oz. I am here! The light from this self is the one I can practice moving into the nighttime dream. I can take this light and make the leap through, if only I remember. The light is the leap. It’s the knife and the slice and the destination. All at once. Who else will understand any of this but you?
In the attic today I crash around, trying to fit boxes and bags full of Christmas back into your old trunks. I smash the lids down to try and make everything fit, but each year there are new additions to your elaborate celebration. More strings of lights, and boughs of greenery, and bells, and platters. I am so angry that I decide: Fuck Christmas Entirely! I’ll never do it again. I never want to unwrap the white tissue paper around each vintage ornament or glass garland. The precious bottlebrush trees, and Old Saint Nicholas, and scary fuzzy wool Santa, and sparkling light-up snowman - FUCK IT ALL. All the Victorian tinsel icicles and your giant childhood blowmold Santa with the bulb inside. He’s not going to sit on the front porch. It’s over.
The pain in my ulcerative stomach bleeds into my lower back and I lie on my side on the giant ottoman, trying to breathe it away so I can stand and stoop under the eves again. But I can’t help myself. Naturally I telegraph my pain to the place I think you might hear it. Selfish of me, but I have pure tears and nowhere to put them, so I send them to you. They must be worth something, even if its only the pure pitch.
But there is not too much time for this folly. There are four days and counting till Ariel and I switch houses. She comes to finish her book, and I am just starting ours. I have my list of tasks: fold and hang winter clothes in attic, put summer screens in windows, put linens in drawers under king bed, clean out fridge, clean kitchen, clean bathroom, send all laundry out, vacuum all rooms, clean out closets, move precious books to high shelves.
The last time I spend up here in the attic alone is in your last few months, when I might succumb to a piece of one of your Valiums for oblivion. There are nights when I drown myself in our bed with old black and white movies on my iPad. Just like in my youth, except without iPad or the Valium, both of which I could have used. I write all of this truth down now, despite my suspicion that it does anyone any good. I set the scene. I kneel alone on our plush white rug and pray for you in the bedroom below. I bargain with my own life, which isn’t worth two cents without you. You are propped upright on pillows to sleep. All to keep you from coughing. All the morphine and Valium and Codeine syrup. Because now it is even more imperative to keep from coughing because you scream in pain. The cancer is now in your hip and coughing makes it unbearable. I need respite from your suffering, which goes through me like a knife.
Well, I’m coming to find you, no matter what shape you’re in. I’ll bring her. The one with the bobby pin in her mouth, the 2-year-old Marlene Deitrich with her dress pulled up, in the black and white photo you cherish. Then you will recognize me. I’ll bring her, and she can bring me to you.
Reminder:
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Episode #14: A Suitable Vessel For Magic