in the dying light

The finches are back. A flitting, chattering flock of tiny green birds appears in the elm outside my office windows at the ragged edge of every summer and stays as long as the camouflage works. As the ground cools and the leaves fade from Pippin Apple Green to Dirty Yellow Ready-To-Drop, there are a few days of Finch Match. I still can’t fathom how bending light changes color or, for that matter, how light bends. I wonder how the finches time it so perfectly and where they go from here.

Before I had any familiarity with death except as a concept, I thought that good people died good deaths and when it would happen was fairly predictable. The idea probably came from novels. A baby dying was a rare and terrible occurrence; most people who died were old and died of, well, old age. Young men died in wars, young women died of tuberculosis or heartbreak or during childbirth (I was big on the pathos genre). The patchwork of my early religious education, I think, reinforced the idea: if you strive to be a good (rule-following, god-fearing) person, you will be rewarded not only by going to heaven when your life is over, you’ll be more likely to pass through the vale of tears peacefully in your sleep, sort of like getting to open one present on Christmas Eve before the big ta-da the next morning. I shucked off the robe of religion long ago but held onto the romantic illusion for a long time that death was visited, like reward points, on the deserving – or not.

When people I loved began to die, it was in the expected way: one grandparent, then another, then my dad, then my mother, at the ages, respectively, of 92, 88, 73, 76, and of ordinary fatal diseases. I was almost 40 years old – recently married to Mr. Forte, my kid almost in college – when Old Carl the First left us, and was very focused and busy with my work and new family. I’d been a civil lawsuit court reporter for 15 years by then, listening to testimony about grisly injuries and wrongful deaths caused by someone’s negligence (on freeways, in hospitals, in plane crashes). Working in that environment effectively (picture the poker face of a reporter or a judge in a courtroom) is possible only if you distance yourself emotionally from the human beings in the cases: the graphic photographs and witness accounts become a scary movie that ends when the house lights come on. Those people who died sudden, spectacular, before-their-time deaths weren’t my people; their deaths were abstractly terrible.

I imagined that I’d (have to) deal with death when people my own age got old and began dying, and then maybe I’d talk about it (and not much else) like the old codgers that hang around donut shops (like Mr. Forte’s dad used to do) or like Marge and her gossipy ladybird pals at lunch (with wine). I’m 62 and the people I hang out with do yoga and play tennis and take Lipitor, so the Funeral Club at Yum Yum seemed decades away.

Then my brother died four months ago, and I realized that death can and does slip under the healthy skins of the far-too-young, of the careful and smart and kind, of the rule-followers. Of my people. I learned that death’s timing follows no clock or calendar, sun or moon, that it can take you in its awful arms when you’re sick or well, miserable or joyous, when someone hates you or loves you more than life. Those people who died in planes crashing into houses in San Diego or mountains in Burma, who died drowning in backyard pools, by stepping off curbs in front of cars or running off schoolbuses, in labor rooms of hospitals, the details of whose lives I had tap-tapped into my Stenograph and put into words on paper, each was someone’s person, just like Craig was mine. And I got another reminder recently.

My son-in-law Chris has had a great friend since the beginning of high school, a woman named Emily, who was a freshman when he was a sophomore. Chris is 42, so that was 27 years ago. When Chris was just 18, still in high school in New York, and got word from Florida that the father he adored was dead, he hung up the phone and went straight to Emily’s. She sat up with Chris and his agony until the next morning when the sun rose. Emily is calm and wise and good, wry and funny, as authentic as a human can be. She married John back when all the friends were getting married, shortly after Amy married Chris. They all lived in San Francisco then. I remember talking to her beautiful self at the party after Amy and Chris’s temple wedding. She and Jonnie moved to a Boston suburb, had two daughters, who are now seven and four, and lived a grounded, happy life.

A little over a year ago Emily’s father died. Her mother died unexpectedly mere months later while the family was together at a summer house on Flathead Lake in Montana. The winter and spring went by back in Massachusetts, fortunately deathless, Jonnie working and training for thriathlons, swimming at Walden every morning, Emily working, the girls in school. Summer came and they camped with friends at Yosemite in August. A month ago, on Labor Day weekend, Emily’s stepfather fell down a mountain while hiking in Montana, and he died. Three parents, all gone, none left. The family gathered again in the lake house, this time for Ted’s memorial, and stayed for a few extra days before dispersing again to California and Cambridge. The adults swam to a rock outcrop in the bay and the kids splashed in the shallows. Late Friday afternoon Jonnie was making one more lap to the rock while Emily herded wet children in towels inside for a bath.

One of Jonnie’s legs was severed by the boat that hit him 300 feet from shore, and although one of the passengers was a doctor and tried to get a tourniquet on him, he died before they got him to the beach.

I can hear little girls’ laughter echoing in a tiled bathroom, feel warm steam on my temples. I can see myself standing on a wooden deck, my hand on the top rail, watching the little waves slap slap the shore, hear the leaves rustle in the trees about to let summer go by. I can’t see Emily’s face. Maybe it’s because she’s gone home with the girls who will not remember their dad except in stories attached to pictures of him, who are numb to having people disappear from their lives, who understand only that death took their father and left their mother and no one knows why.

I can’t see Emily’s face. Because I see Chris’s face. Because now I know that there is no reason at all why this happened to Jonnie and not to him, not the glare of sunlight on a lake or a distracted taxi driver or a knobby knot of cancer cells, Chris, the man I would have custom-ordered if I had been designing not a son-in-law but a son. And my hands on the deck rail begin to tremble, don’t they, because now I can’t see Jonnie’s face or Chris’s because I see Amy’s face, my heart, my heart.

The beats are seconds apart, slow and drumlike, while I hold this terrible possibility in my mouth and I stand here, blinking and looking at the backs of my hands. This is why I have been so afraid, why I can’t talk anymore about Craig, or yet about Craig, why I left the letters, why I cry at even the idea of writing the rest of his sad, twisted story. It isn’t his face I see. It’s Chris’s or Amy’s or Tom’s or – I can’t even say it – Simone’s. It could be any one of them, alive and brilliant and funny and warm, these people I love, right here with me now but perhaps not by tonight. And then not tomorrow, not any tomorrow.

And it offends this romantic belief I guarded that death is selective, that it doesn’t take good, rule-following people, that accidental, bloody deaths happen to people who are stupid and take risks, who abuse themselves, who shoot guns while drunk, who drive speeding cars, who jump off mountains with flimsy manmade wings. I believed that until it got close to me, until I realized how silly it was to think Death cares a snap how good or careful or old someone is.

The trite line here might be “Live every day as though it were your last,” but I’m smart enough to know that gets lost in the daily shuffle of work and phone calls and dogs, eating and sleeping, what’s new at the movies. I would like, frankly, to find and burn any remaining trite lines.

I am an optimist trying to be a realist. I hope, as if it will matter, for the life of our beloved Siobhan, my superstar 47-year-old niece who is at war with Stage 4 cancer. I touch Mr. Forte’s old, warm self with my lips or my hands whenever I can reach him; I dance with him by the kitchen sink; we went to the beach last night and watched the sun set. I make plans to drive north to be with Amy and Chris and Simone, to breathe their air. I watch the finches while they’re here, hopping in the elm, teasing me like flying Waldos.

I close my eyes and see a house on a lake in Montana. Summer is over and the trees have turned; leaves are in drifts at the feet of the pines and in the vee of the boat dock. The water is an intense blue, clear as lead crystal and very cold; hard gusts of wind bellow through the woods. The summer people have gone, leaving the tough year-rounders. A good young man died in a tragedy just out there on the water, and a good old woman died in the house, but that hasn’t changed anything here. In the soft October sunshine a house still stands between the trees, sturdy as true love, next to a lake that is always washing clean the gravel on the shore.
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Boston Globe/Obituary/John Darrah/2012/Oct 4 

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55 Responses to “in the dying light”

LC Neal says:
10.07.2012 - 3:05 pm

I hate this for Emily, and those beautiful girls, and Chris, and Amy, and you, my dear.

But this is award-winning, fireworks-a-trophy-and-a-parade-worthy writing.

xoxo
L

candace Reply:
October 7th, 2012 at 4:06 pm

a million thanks, my friend. xo

Skypixiezero says:
10.07.2012 - 5:47 pm

What LC said…….

I’m 71. I feel what you’re feeling. Not about your people, of course, but about mine. The worst was my darling wife, Callista, at only 49. But almost as bad was my best friend, Hyacinth, a month ago, at 92. Fortunately neither saw it coming and neither suffered.

The tears still come, though……
.

candace Reply:
October 7th, 2012 at 7:35 pm

I’m sorry about Hyacinth, that you lost a good friend. Thanks for reading, Sky.

alsoknownas says:
10.07.2012 - 6:13 pm

At 61 I’ve seen much of it, been there for the last gasp and the crushing grip of the hand held in mine. Twenty nine years ago Monday for dad,many since.I get numb when I hear of more on the way.It’s the sudden,unexpected,no warning,here now then gone ones that wrench me from a comfortable understanding. We have another one coming up and the numbness has arrived. Maybe that’s not right but it’s what I’ve got.

candace Reply:
October 7th, 2012 at 7:46 pm

That’s exactly it,AKA, that even when you think you can handle the slow dying, the predictable old ones, something happens like this, and it’s hard to breathe. Poor Emily – her stepdad *falls off a mountain* and then her husband?? I mean, how can you not feel like some freaky death magnet when those are the third and fourth losses so close to you? There’s just nothing to say, nothing.

Lea Lane says:
10.07.2012 - 6:22 pm

What L.C. said. A gorgeous, thought-provoking autumn elegy. I feel your pain, and the pain of those you care for.
I feel the awareness you write about like never before. But there is some consolation I hope, that as long as you can write like this that you have the gift of life at the moment and after the moment.
Gotta go hug Bill.
xoxo

candace Reply:
October 7th, 2012 at 7:47 pm

Hugging Bill is a good idea. Thank you for always leaving such kind comments, Lea.

joan Haskins says:
10.07.2012 - 6:29 pm

I’m so sorry for all the sadness. Everyone’s sadness. It’s too much to take in sometimes and makes it hard to breathe. But then you write about dancing in the kitchen with Mr.Forte, and I exhale a little.

Your writing is stellar, Candace. xox

candace Reply:
October 7th, 2012 at 7:52 pm

Mr. Forte is my lifetime favorite dance partner, the cutie. He keeps a lot of sadness tamped down. Thank you, dear friend.

Roger says:
10.07.2012 - 6:32 pm

I would call this piece a major victory in the war against trite lines.

People write novels that don’t say it as well as you said it here. How deep down you reached for this comes through. Brilliantly.

candace Reply:
October 7th, 2012 at 7:54 pm

Your encouragement makes me try harder next time, roger. Huge thanks.

greenheron says:
10.07.2012 - 6:37 pm

I am sorry for the loss of such a handsome young man, in such an awful way.

I don’t know how you feel about your writing, but some days my art feels like I’m taptaptapping away at the paper in an effort to postpone death. It’s a good illusion.

candace Reply:
October 7th, 2012 at 7:55 pm

I will conjure up that image next time I sit down to write something, heron. It’s a wonderful illusion.

jmac says:
10.07.2012 - 6:39 pm

I just published a post along similar lines… strange how mortality shifts our perspective.

candace Reply:
October 7th, 2012 at 7:55 pm

I’ll go check out your piece, jon. Thank you.

Julie says:
10.07.2012 - 6:57 pm

It is not trite to say “Live every day as though it were your last.” Instead it is absolutely brilliant. Do you want to live your last day in anger, worry or some other useless emotion? Live today like it matters. Tell those you love about it as often as possible. Eat something wonderful, go someplace new, or visit someplace familiar that you love. Take a nap. Be kind to yourself. Never ever go to bed/leave your love with harsh words. You just never know.

candace Reply:
October 7th, 2012 at 7:59 pm

I probably didn’t say it as we’ll as I should have. It’s exactly the right idea, Julie, to do the things you list, and dancing with mr forte and going to SF are on my list. What I meant is that it’s easy to say the line without living it, to repeat the saying and ignore the doing. I’m glad you came by, really I am.

Sheila Luecht says:
10.07.2012 - 7:02 pm

Writing which reaches the heart. I am sorry for all the sadness, but most sad for the children who will not have their dad. Life is sudden in it’s joy and it’s parting.

candace Reply:
October 7th, 2012 at 8:04 pm

Thank you, Sheila. They have an incredible mom and a lot of support. As terribly sad as this is, I’m sure they will be ok.

Algis says:
10.07.2012 - 7:19 pm

……..(¯`v´¯) (¯`v´¯)
☼•*¨`*•.¸.(ˆ◡ˆ).¸.•*
…………… *•.¸.•* ♥⋆★•❥ Thanx & Smiles (ツ) & ♥ L☼√Ξ ☼ ♥
⋆───★•❥ ☼ .¸¸.•*`*•.♥ (ˆ◡ˆ) ♥⋯ ❤ ⋯ ★(ˆ◡ˆ) ♥⋯ ❤ ⋯ ★

kim gamble says:
10.07.2012 - 8:31 pm

What Roger said, really, about how this is written.
What to say about The Shadow, though, and its aftermath …
Emily as mom will no doubt “cope,” as they say. “Adapt” might be a better word.
Emily as widow though ~ who copes, who adapts, to that ?
It’s not so much we lose the love they gave us, is it, as the love we had to give to these extraordinary people & there I go, ‘trite-is-us’ …
Which is why I enjoy reading you, and people like you ( & the numbers are dwindling more than anyone else.
Especially on subjects I have no words of my own for, on things That Matter.
Thanks, Candace. A brave and wonderful piece. Hard won.

candace Reply:
October 7th, 2012 at 10:04 pm

your comments make me think of things i had overlooked. this one, what about the love we can’t give to someone who’s gone, not just what we won’t get. i wrote (and deleted) that it goes somewhere else (to kids, to another person if we’re lucky enough to find him/her), but then i thought of lea (above) and some of the things she’s written. i guess i would hope to see it as just belonging to that person who died, as if it were wrapped up in a package with both your names on it, this love. and if someone else comes along, you could love them with *more* love, not so much a transfer. does that make sense? maybe not. but it’s a subject that isn’t about sense, really, is it. thanks, as always, kim.

DiBi says:
10.07.2012 - 9:31 pm

Candace, I feel like I could go on and on as this is such a deeply thoughtful meditation on what really matters. I find myself nodding in agreement as you describe wanting to hold on to that romantic belief in the face of a randomness that can be unfathomable. Just like the glare of the sunlight on the lake. Heartbreaking.
That you write beautifully is a given. That your writing is bursting with wisdom, empathy, and bravery makes it a rare treasure.
(also, your dear Craig is patient. When you talk of Craig, sometimes I think of my own Craig – he’s my closest sib and 4 yrs younger too. Little brothers. xo)

candace Reply:
October 7th, 2012 at 10:09 pm

i’m humbled by your compliment on the writing. really, thank you so much. i wonder if i’m not lucky, in a sort of terrible way, to have a lot of these losses sort of piling up in a row – it has made me be more realistic than i was, even if more aware of how deep the holes they leave really are. (nothing like emily’s, though – so much, so soon is impossible to imagine.)

your ‘little brother’ parenthetical made me smile. craig always made me smile too. thanks. xo

amy abbott says:
10.07.2012 - 9:52 pm

Candace, iamso sorry for your friend. Xxoo. Amazing writing.

candace Reply:
October 7th, 2012 at 10:10 pm

thank you, amy. i’m always glad to see you and hope you’re doing so well with sandra! xo

Owl_Says_Who says:
10.07.2012 - 10:10 pm

This is holy, candace…this is holy work, at least as sacred and worthy and true as anything I’ve ever read on the subject. More importantly, I wish this life thing were easier, which is my odd way of saying I’m so, so sorry for the flood of fucked-up-ness which seems to be happening lately. Words are so insufficient…but our hearts are with you…

candace Reply:
October 7th, 2012 at 10:15 pm

thanks, owl. i’m sorry too – for someone like emily to just keep having these body blows thrown at her defies any sort of cosmic fairness. chris was in boston today for the memorial, and i hope he comes home and says she’s doing ok. gawd. the mind reels, doesn’t it? i love to see that you’ve stopped by – hope you and raven and the boy are doing wonderfully. xo

Dale says:
10.08.2012 - 4:54 am

Roger Tory Peterson titled one page of warbler portraits “Confusing Fall Warblers,” their virtually indistinguishable, subtle field marks–an eye stripe here, a wing band there–leaving the birder at a loss. Which is how we feel at times like this–at a loss to explain such a terrifying world when it smacks us in the face, at a loss to find the right words to do the impossible and console a friend, for what can one say?
There is a profoundly and (sadly) beautiful elegiac quality about this memorial from the start, and the sharpness of the images–the widow at the rail, you and your hunk dancing in the kitchen (finding the best recourse to trite phrases– actually living them), children frolicking one moment and earthquaked the next. And, of course, that last. The water endures. The rocks endure. We are but shadows, poor players who strut and fret our hour upon the stage. But we fret together, and in the solace of each other’s caring and concern, in the reassurance and support of each other’s love, we gain the strength if not to strut (impossible to summon at times like this), at least to stumble on. Un abrazo fuerte, mi amiga.

candace Reply:
October 8th, 2012 at 7:58 am

i’ve rewritten this response about six times. i’m at a loss to say anything more than thank you and i wish i could write like you do. thanks for letting me stumble nearby, old friend.

Rita says:
10.08.2012 - 5:43 am

Eloquent, as so many here have written also. Followed the links to the obit, what an impressive man and a deep loss, too young indeed.
I have also seen how unfair death is, taking even those who follow the rules.
Beautifully done and always so worth the visit to your lovely site.

candace Reply:
October 8th, 2012 at 7:59 am

your poetry would do them justice, these lovely people, rita. i am so grateful you were here.

blackie says:
10.08.2012 - 7:09 am

Greetings, Candace. Your brilliantly composed words captured the thoughts and experience of many. The universe of thoughts that such confusing events provoke can be exhausting as we all try to figure out things that cannot be figured out and most certainly not solved. Death has shadowed me in this life-five close deaths before first grade-and has always been an unwelcome companion. Trite expressions are irritating, I agree, but often true. This shared reality ride we are experiencing together on this blue orb is not a long ride. Most of life is pure bullshit. Soak in the sun, pass on joy and look around is not a bad way to roll. Peace…

candace Reply:
October 8th, 2012 at 8:00 am

peace back to you, blackie. you’re one of the handful of people i know who actually know the score on the subject. huge thanks for stopping by.

alison says:
10.08.2012 - 7:18 am

This is a magnificent tour de force – every single word.

candace Reply:
October 8th, 2012 at 8:01 am

thank you, alison. coming from you, that’s quite saying something. xoxo

jlsathre says:
10.08.2012 - 7:24 am

All so true. All so sad. And all so well written. Death always makes us look at life with new eyes, not necessarily with understanding, but perhaps with a better appreciation of the continuum.

candace Reply:
October 8th, 2012 at 8:02 am

i so appreciate that you came by, jl, and left such kind words.

Jeff Barber says:
10.08.2012 - 9:42 pm

As always, Candace, the seeming ease with which you deal this eloquently with such complex, weighty topics by using simple text on a blank page leaves me filled with admiration for your skill, and, to be honest, a slight twinge of jealousy.

Regardless, discussion of writing skills isn’t the point, is it? I once believed as you did about death, on the rare occasions I thought about in more than a passing manner. Those beliefs, coupled with a certainty (maybe a wish?) that I’d die long before anyone I loved did, rendered me immune to serious worries about what death might mean. Then, when it turned out I didn’t die as young as I’d expected to, and the deaths of loved ones began to occur around me just as they were bound to (and here’s a weird thing; I’ve been a pallbearer at every funeral I’ve been to, which is quite a few), I began to grasp the realization that it can and does happen to the good and to the young and to parents with young children and, just generally, to those who in many ways are the most deserving of life. My eyes were opened to the truth that concepts like “fairness” and “what is right” had nothing to do with any of it. To this day, I fear my own death far less than the passing of those closest to me, even as I understand that what I want or hope for has no bearing on the matter.

candace Reply:
October 8th, 2012 at 9:58 pm

it’s quite a paradox, isn’t it – that who dies is random and without regard to merit, but we’re taught to be good and careful with the implied threat that if we aren’t … Not to mention, of course, that it’s tough for a control freak like me to admit that, of the people i love, i can’t keep even one of them safe. sigh. thank you for getting this and being so kind about my writing. you’re awfully good yourself, jeff, which makes the compliment mean even more.

Myriad says:
10.09.2012 - 6:43 am

Candace – wonderfully expressed. Those cruel out-of-the-blue, out-of-time deaths seem far worse.

candace Reply:
October 9th, 2012 at 11:53 am

thanks, myr. good to have you back from gallivanting all over prague!

Bill S. says:
10.09.2012 - 6:05 pm

I wanted so to write something deep and meaningful here, but I can’t seem to catch those firefly words in my mental jar.

I wish that I could impart some comfort to you, but how do we comfort when faced with the irrational? How do we make sense of it?

I don’t have the answer either. But one thing I do know, I know you write with a clarity of thought and an incredibly passionate sense of truth. I see what you feel when I read what you write. That is an immense gift that you give to me.

And I hope I am worthy of it.

My sincerest sympathies for the loss of such a fine person.

candace Reply:
October 9th, 2012 at 9:34 pm

ah, bill. it means everything to have a reader like you who looks past the words to the grit of things. you – and the few others like you – are exactly who i write for. i’m glad you got here to read this and know who they are, john and emily, so glad.

sophie.h says:
10.10.2012 - 9:39 am

I am sorry–so much sadness–why? but here we are, still here.

candace Reply:
October 12th, 2012 at 8:55 am

i’m always grateful for your thoughtful reading, sophie. thank you.

c&v says:
10.10.2012 - 8:41 pm

Well. I can’t think of a damn thing to say except sorry so sorry and how lucky you were for so long. Grief and sorrow crash into us at the speed of love.

(and, you know, beautifully written and the first paragraph is so charming and I love the photo and the gossipy ladybird pals and the quick and gentle way you told of Jonnie’s death and many other things it would take me too long to articulate)

candace Reply:
October 12th, 2012 at 8:56 am

“… crash into us at the speed of love.” you write poetry everywhere, c&v. thank you for reading and for that so-visual phrase.

c&v says:
10.10.2012 - 9:24 pm

Wanted to share this:

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye:

http://inwardboundpoetry.blogspot.com/2012_04_01_archive.html

candace Reply:
October 12th, 2012 at 8:58 am

that is a gorgeous poem. wow. thanks for it and for letting me know who the author is. have forwarded it to some people who will love it too.

Annie says:
10.11.2012 - 5:28 pm

I’m still too sad about this to make a coherent comment. I’m working n it.

candace Reply:
October 12th, 2012 at 8:58 am

xoxo

Emily says:
10.12.2012 - 7:46 am

And now you are not a court reporter… The house lights are on and you are standing there on stage, talking to us, reciting the poetry of tragedy, and we are barely breathing. At least, I am not aware of any breathing. I find way more truth in this telling than you could possibly have typed in a court report.

Thank you, Candace. I need to go breathe.

candace Reply:
October 12th, 2012 at 8:59 am

i’m delighted to see you here, emily. thank you so much for your kind comment and for coming over.