GOING TOWARD THE FURTHER SHORE

“Now the dead move through all us, still glowing.” May Sarton

By Bill Coolidge

"For my mother and my sister. My mother wove this for her before she died. My sister, my mother and I were all afflicted at the same time. Only thing they had back then were sulfa pills, my sister’s body became resistant. My mother and I left the hospital; my sister died there.”

He stands tall, his wispy white hair unsettled along the sides of his large framed head. His steel-like glasses not hiding his rose-rimmed eyelids. He holds a bark-colored frame, with pink and red embroidery, faded against his chest. As I watch him, his body settles in as if he were a young boy with a teddy bear in his arms, forlorn, holding on. There is a fire crackling stillness, pitched high with expectation as he tucks this memento under his right arm and with his left lights a candle in recognition of his grief. His five year old sister died. He, a two year old, lived.

“Dia de los muertos.”A day of remembrance celebrated at the church where my wife is pastor, on November 1. The underpinnings of life soften on this day, stories elicit quiet sobbing. Tears flow toward that faraway country which is an unspoken cradle, tucked deeply into our souls. We are the caretakers, the memory keepers.

“The State Police knocked at our door, it was midnight.”
“Last spring, at coffee hour, I heard a voice that reminded me of my homeland, of Hitler, of escaping.”
“We started a foundation in her name...” A new person at the church speaking across the chasm of a recent move, “in Oregon where she...”
Throughout this chilled morning, stories were told quietly, faces lapped with gleaming drops of watery beads. Not a boastful pride, rather a response of courageous necessity. These caretakers of memories do not let them sink and fall away forgotten. These stories now have a life of their own, circulating around the room, offering permission to cry or hold a smile, a cradling of what shall never die.
“She died ten years ago,” a slick smile on the face of this 80-year-old cowboy, the heels of his turquoise boots worn on the edges. He stumbles up in front of us, his Lone Ranger black mask askew. I sense he is a veteran of grief, going forward, falling back. His smile, broad, vivacious, I half expect to see him jump on his horse and ride off toward Farmville, a nearby town.

“We’re celebrating our 65th aniversary today. She died in May...” Anamnesis, a Greek word meaning that the past comes into the present skirting the boundaries of chronological time, pacing forward, always forward. His shoulders hunched over, the buttons on his plaid woolen shirt mismatched and the back of his shirt hanging out over his belt, he reaches out with his white candle embracing the emptiness. In that moment, his wife of 65 years is with him, smiling, as is he.

A friend from San Francisco visited recently. She lives and works among the homeless and gathers on Tuesday mornings with a group from the street who want to tell stories, drink coffee, be together, “inside” for a bit of time. Kay told me, “Sam said after September 11 ‘that the membrane between our life and the security against death has weakened, it’s slim, very tender’.”

I’ve known that for 25 years. I felt it acutely when I left my little girl in the hospital and drove country roads to my house passing through tiny villages, Fearrington, Green Level, and Apex, then down a long dark street, to a house on a corner. I had a yellow Ford van. It was dark and cavernous. I sat leaning against the wheel and was comforted by the green lights indicating gas, speed, water temperature.

Pitch black pavement, sometimes stars, moon ascending and descending, week after week I’d drive that road at midnight, no other cars around. I often felt like I had entered some space reserved for those experiencing the verge of death meeting life.
During this time, my daughter of five faded, faded away. She withdrew into an inner space reserved for silence. More often now she would tell me, “Daddy, no talk, no talk.” Her need was to leave slowly, quietly, unimpinged by my anxiety about appetite, her weight loss, physical therapy, exercise.

The image I carried down those country roads was one I had of myself as a kid, blowing the delicate seeds of a dandelion, until all the wisks of floating white had left and descended onto the dark green, waiting spring grass. How was I to know that in a few months that nightly daydream would come true? That at daybreak one early January morning, I would be holding her in my arms, speaking softly as she lay quietly, looking me straight in the eye, slumped lightly, her shallow breathing reeling off the last wisp of life.

It was then I knew about the thin, vulnerable membrane between life and death. Kay’s friend Sam says that it is slimmer now. I count that as true. As a country, we are coming to terms with such a fragile security. Maybe that membrane has always been tenuous. It’s just that right now, following Sepember 11, 2001, we know it to be true.
“Now the dead move through all of us, still gleaming,” intones my wife as she concludes the worship service. Dandelions, a black bandit mask, a 60-year-old framed memento, a spouse returning to the embracing memory of ancient man who refuses to let go. And why not? I am not suckered by the saying, “Let go of the past.”
On this day, I went back 25 years to my days of being a daddy. I stood up before these people, new to me since our move on Labor Day and spoke about my “gypsy daughter.” She wore bandanas, long-flowing skirts, mismatched socks and sandals to school. I believe my face did glow that Sunday as I brought her back. With the candle in my hand, I told the story of her kindergarten teacher calling me and saying, “Mr. Coolidge, are you aware of what your daughter Robin is wearing to school today?”