Jane of Kings

Scrolling through random TV, channel after channel is routinely showing some film or series of extreme violence... pain, human aggression-- terror... blood, injury... death.  Either some scenario or elaborate criminal plot which involves weapons and retaliation...  or war;  science fiction monstrosities with hostility and vicious hatreds. Then there are the natural disaster movies with catastrophic occurrences-- widespread destruction and damage, global tragedies... 

And then there is this unprecedented newsworthy human year: watching images of the Ganges River swollen with corpses, the 23rd psalm came to mind--- the valley of the shadow of death.  Yea though I walk there, the psalm dictates, I shall fear no evil.  

My friend Jane passed away just ten days ago... her 'moment of decease', that is, because for weeks she had been something less than living.  She'd forbidden me, knowing my inclinations to confess and reveal, from mentioning her name in my poetry or blogs.  This was difficult.  Since I was small, I have loved the name Jane as though it were a sheet of prismic glass through which to view the world.  Queen Jane, Bob Dylan wrote... and she was.  Ravaged by a cruel diagnosis, she met her fate with courage and relentless bravery, like a good Catholic.  

Nothing to declare, the hospice priest categorized her, although she tried to muster a few lightweight sins and omissions just for the process... she was true and honest, empathic and observant, smart and acerbic.  Even my son liked her... and he doesn't comment on many people.  At my behest he willingly took her home-baked care packages and always came away with some worthwhile wisdom or TV recommendation.  

The worst part about a long farewell is that the ending overshadows the rest-- at least temporarily.  While we all drudge up past memories and tendernesses, the horror of illness hangs in the air like a low ceiling.  My father died at nearly 97; my mother survived another 16 months without him.  I remember too well the  'old man' claustrophobic smell of the room where they both sat year in and out in their nineties... although they were clean and neatly dressed. When I visited my mother during her last months the air was lighter without him... but I began to realize that she was sitting there not in her own scent but the lingering scent of her husband, like a cloud or a shroud.  She'd befriended death; she was trying to find the doorway. 

While Jane and I had some fun afternoons after her diagnosis, the treatments were erosive and the day ends early for the terminally ill. It is all they can do to go through motions of living while they are being observed.  Being Jane, she fussed and worried over me-- was I eating, did I want a coat-- boots... hats?  These things became important; she lectured me on the merits of make-up and hair arranging since we no longer had our former beauty to conceal our flaws.  She dragged me to shops and stocked up on the junk food she loved despite my protests that she choose healthy options.  We even went to a senior center one day with me shaking my head... she insisted we'd each get a free pair of glasses and she chose some wild blingy glam frames.  The finished pair never materialized.  Later she playfully threatened the staff:  I'll be dead before those glasses appear... and she was.  But it was funny.  She repeated it during her last weeks.  

She was funny.  She was vain and always wore her make-up though she cared more for her birds than herself.  Her things-- her personal treasures-- were copious and carefully selected.  She surrounded herself with a kind of beauty.  But she had no partner... prohibitively selective she'd been... one of a breed of city eccentrics who live this way-- in a sort of community, in a sort of cocoon... knowing neighbors, generations of friends and neighborhood characters... and pets of all kinds, none of whom, save the pair of birds, outlived her.  

She was kind.  She understood things... we talked and laughed on the phone... we'd neglected one another for years until her illness gave us this opportunity for sisterhood.  We shared things-- youtube and films and books... she read my work and gave praise when it was due. She pushed me like a mother. I tried to be uplifting about her diagnosis; there are miracles, I insisted... no one can predict your outcome.  I began to carry her name with me-- like a song-- a prayer-- a constant mantra, as I do... all day... when I walk, when I run, when I clean house or lie awake at night.  Please God or Jesus or Mary... make her well... Jane... I coopted her name like a lyric.  

At the very end I distanced myself a little.  I didn't sit by her bed waiting for the finale.  I sat a couple of times, but I had to separate myself from this Jane-- from the dying Jane.  Then maybe, I thought, she will live.  I sat in churches-- the hospice chapel, St. Patrick's, St. Vincent's...  I talked to birds, to statues of the Virgin... to my ceiling at night... my various crucifixes.  I tried some Hail Mary's.  

And while we try to remember her now.. it's blurry.  I'm not sure to whom I speak, when I conjure her image... I try to erase the scent of death-in-hospice, the stale bedsheet smell, the disinfectant and the coldness of the nurses and aides.  I don't know what death is supposed to be-- the preferred version is that one 'dies peacefully' but I am not certain Jane did not rage a little in poetic fashion.  It is a relief when suffering ends.  I miss her more these days as I miss Alan and many others and walk truly in the shadow of death this year which has altered forever my own heart, my own trajectory.  What I realized today-- like my mother who sat in the room of my father... I walk with her... it became a habit... and while I will add another name to the litany of my private prayer-chain, and I have formally grieved and repented... lit candles, wept, recited... I am left alone with the Prayer of Jane.  

Waiting (2020 version)

One of my ex-boyfriends had a song I heard him perform only once; the chorus went Wai-hay-hay-hay...way-hay-hay-hay-hay-hay- tinngggg...  It went on.. not easy to sing on key unless you're sort of a yodeler...  but somehow some version of it has been repeating in my head.   Here we are, nearly in unison, across the world-- taking one of those 'breaths' a brilliant conductor can orchestrate and control by simply holding up his baton... while the brass, the strings, the woodwinds-- they all freeze in mid-breath or mid-stroke... waiting.

We spend a good part of our lives waiting; less so in the 5g internet age where responses are immediate-- goods are located and purchased, conversations anywhere in real-time, deals made, interruptions even possible.  When I was small I waited evenings for my father to turn the corner in his business suit-- he shared a cab and walked the last block or so.  Daddy! we'd yell, joyfully... greeting him just before he'd retire to the den with the scotch-on-the-rocks he'd waited for all day.

And now, the good witch in the story says, 'we must wait'... while the batter magically becomes cake, the oats and water turn into porridge, the pasta softens and curls, coffee brews.  Trees grow and fruit ripens, nested eggs hatch with life, babies are pulled from laboring mothers and childhood begins.  We keep ourselves occupied with schooling and tasks-- with jobs and careers and games and entertainment... while nature cycles on and provides us with most of what we expect.

So what now, as the whole world is paused-- not quite in unison-- for what have we waited?  For a new order?  For a universal decree of mourning?  A mass funeral for those families who have waited many weeks without comfort?  A diminished life for those who have been sickened and not quite recovered? Those who have been wounded and disabled?  A vaccine or cure for something that scarcely existed just six months ago?  A medal of honor for those who perished, who gave their lives unknowingly for some kind of cruel science?  Rewards for the medics and attendants who cared tirelessly and often hopelessly for people who were strangers and became intimates? For society to resume its habits and ways, or to resume with slightly altered protocol?  Will people be kind to one another? Has the waiting tested their patience to the limit?

For me, aside from its homophonic twin, waiting had a certain romance to it.  The 'hardest part', Tom Petty insisted, but I disagree.  The diagnosis is worse-- the verdict, the failure to acquit, the end.  We are all here waiting for death, some have said.... life itself is the waiting.

Ironically, people have learned to stand on line with more patience.  Of course, most have phones and social 'pacifiers' with which to entertain themselves.  I bring a book; I read, look around-- enjoy the air.  Things take much time these days; I waited tonight on a long supermarket line to find the price of chicken had doubled once again.  On my way out, I remarked about it to a woman with greying dreadlocks...  But I'll buy you chicken, baby, she said... in this voice that brought on a flood of tears.  No, no, I reassured her-- I'm fine-- just cranky.  We all need a hug, baby, she said... but we gotta wait for that shit! .... and we laughed.

Like those Biblical patriarchs and Greek heroes-- we wait for love, we wait for death, we wait for God to listen and look and reply.  Most of the time, we are clueless and helpless.  Especially now-- we wait for our mayors and governors to advise us, to coordinate a plan-- to be safe.

The tent hospital in Central Park has been dismantled-- just like that, it vanished almost overnight.  Families of those who did not survive here will have no place to pass and remember their loved one.  It is a grass field, once again.  Will children play here and forget the small successes and tragedies that marked this lawn in the month of April?  

I have learned from experience that grief subsides with the passing of four seasons.  My friend whose husband passed away does not believe this.  You need to get by one birthday, one Christmas, one anniversary, one snowfall, one fireworks display, one turkey dinner... etc.  It is unimaginable but it comes-- the day when you forget for an hour or two, you sleep without a dream, you laugh deeply and uncontrollably.

Walking around the Harlem Meer at dusk tonight, I witness people with masks zig-zagging paths to avoid others.  A few men are maskless by a bench, laughing and smoking, sharing food, touching.  Will we ever trust one another enough to stand shoulder-by-shoulder in crowds?  I passed one of my son's former mentors last night and we spontaneously and courageously clasped hands.  It was so human and healing and strange.  A woman shook her head as though we'd violated some civic law.

I am willing to wait for the next version of future... but not with phone in hand, biding my time.  I am hoping to fill this with some kind of energy-- some kind of work, some kind of prayer... so when the baton lowers,  I will pledge myself forward into the next measure, knowing it is likely to be the 'hardest part'.