Please Talk about Me When I'm Gone

Aftermath

(2002)

i.

I wake up and the first thought I have when I open my eyes is this: My mother is dead. Whatever I've been dreaming about or hoping to forget while my eyes were closed returns as consciousness clears upon waking. It's the first thought, a rhetorical question, an assertion, a mantra.

You did it, I think.

At least, I know, the hard part is over.

Now, I hope, all I need to do is somehow go about the business of living.

The worst is over; the worst is only beginning. It will continue this way, I understand, until it is no longer this way.

The hardest part will be the only thing that gets me through: I have the rest of my life to live.

ii.

Making the list. I've only done that one other time, when my engagement ended (it was as mutual as something like that can ever be, so at least there was no obvious victim or villain there). Both times, I dreaded making the calls because I didn't want to impose my grief on anyone, particularly the people closest to me. Even knowing that's what they're for. That's what they mean when they say that's what friends are for.

iii.

Obviously you'll deliver the eulogy, my father said. It wasn't a demand, but it wasn't a question. Whatever it was, it was the most meaningful thing anyone has ever said to me.

Yes, I said.

Obviously. Or maybe I just nodded.

Of course I would, and without thinking about it (because nobody who is normal thinks things like this), I understood that I'd been preparing all along for this moment.

iv.

I remember little about the viewings (I know we called my grandparents' wakes but I don't think anyone says that anymore), except for the faces. Just walking into that airless room and seeing my history to that point standing in front of me. Many of the people I loved best in the world willing me to find my way through the next moment. These are the things that sustain us, and tell us we've managed-through the fortuitous balance of luck and design-to live a worthwhile life. We absorb that inspiration like air and it carries us along, even if we don't realize we're standing. And we file it away, storing it greedily for the darker days that everyone knows will be waiting in the future, like exits on a highway.

v.

During those last months, the ugly before and interminable after, I'd mostly been too dejected to drink. And that was fine, this was a good thing; the last thing anyone needs is to pour poison on the smoking embers of distress and isolation. And I was isolated, then, and found myself isolated after. Now had arrived; it was now now.

With death comes relief. For the one suffering, for the ones witnessing the suffering. But it only begins the ceaseless cycle of grief and mourning. And the memories. It was arduous to imagine those who would have to deal with their parents' old age, infirmity, and the endless hours of dead time, before death. There was never anything good, at any time, about death and dying. The question during this time becomes this: Is there anything good about living?

Eventually I began to come around. Old habits, routines, distractions. I knew I was normal when I began doing dumb things. Like drinking. After an experience like this, I developed an allergy for abstention-even the kind that most adults work themselves toward and prepare themselves to embrace (the red meat, the cigars, the drinks, etc.). During a time of duress we might contemplate a serial flirtation with sobriety, or vegetarianism (but not church; never church). After a while we come to our senses, and this is a sign of slow recovery. The last thing anyone needs after watching a loved one die too young is something else to be alienated about.