Entering the spice markets I smell the simmering energy of yellow and red: turmeric, ground annatto seed, anise and sweet clove. I don't buy anything. I remember only how, once, not so long ago, I drew a warm bath for you with eucalyptus and cinnamon bark. Live your life, friends admonish me. What does it matter that night dips into darkest vats of color, that day shutters the stars with light? I want to believe there were many things we shared that still make you feel sweet, that make you feel something when we say your name.
Postmemory
"It is the memory of love we love." ~ Sandeep Parmar if it's true death binds us closer to history then we've always studied elegy schooled in grief the moment we break from the womb we squint through the first door overcome by light and air— i dont' know how to describe the first cry that left my lips how long it bannered until subsiding a friend asked if i could remember how it felt to be carried in my mother's arms what color and texture how time felt then how it feels now
Stages of Grief
What you find is there's no definitive progression from 1 to 5. You knew acceptance long before the last time you guided her slowly to the bathroom (she had begun to fold into herself, like a bird; could still walk, but not on her own) and sat her down on the cold toilet rim. You never thought to offer prayer that was plea; bargaining—for what? more time, more days of the mind's awful fading away, flashing less and less in random bursts of remembrance? As for anger—it came much earlier, learning of the forms of cruel neglect at the hands of kin supposed to be caring for her. Long years of bereavement, prior to the fact of her actual passing; coming upon fragments of her life in such sad disarray. Until just before the end, there was no denying the strength of her spirit. Seven months ago, she'd asked for a swipe of lipstick, loved on slices of custard pie; declared she wanted to live to be a hundred. Until just before the end and the body's failing, still fiercely unwilling to let go yet of this life.
Death in a Different Time Zone
In Latin, the word equinox means equal night— there are two times each year when day and night are the same length in all parts of the world. On one side, she was dying. On the other, she was already dead, her breaths having slowed until they could not mist the mirror anymore. The three women who cared for her until the end folded the sheets and prepared her body for its last ceremony of fire, for sifting into an urn bearing her name. On this side of the world, on that first day of her actual crossing, alarms sounded on all our phones as we sat in offices and classrooms—they signaled potential coastal flooding in the next 36 hours, from a tropical storm bearing down on the eastern seaboard. But what do you call the room in the sky where the sun's circuit and the celestial equator intersect? The earth turns, and light can't bend. It's dark in that half of the earth not facing the sun. Could you just keep traveling west so tomorrow never catches up? Yesterday, she was only dying; or she had only just died. Today she is dead.
Remnants
"...we carry everything with us when we go" - Brian Turner All your folded triangles of cloth; notions, zippers, buttons, shiny rick-rack trim from dry goods stores All your mended-unmended holes in sheer mosquito netting Months of rain, thunder and lightning; the cravings they gave us for sardines, vinegar, rice All your rehearsals, your dresses and gowns The stories you threaded into our ears, boiled noodles buttered till they tasted like milk I cannot slit a seam without hearing your voice Every blade sheathed, lengths of thread knotted thrice; thimbles tucked into an empty cookie tin Someday the silence will reel us all in
Columbarium
Think of the dovecote as a prototype of the columbarium—rows of small hollows stacked in soft rock or clay to house these small-breasted birds. Slender-billed and dusky, purplish-backed, russet-crowned. Shining Imperial, Pompadour Green, Bleeding Heart pigeons and Emerald Doves of the family Columbidae. Some are bred for their homing skills, a kind of innate sense that is both compass and map: guarantee they'll find a way to fly home and not to any other place. Perhaps today is the day my mother finally finds her own way home, after months of illness and years of tribulation. Her skin is almost the sheen and featherblue of birds. Like theirs, her bones will hollow out, the skull become lighter so it does not weigh her down in the air.
Sky Grief
Noctalgia is the term scientists have coined to describe the pain we feel, and will increasingly feel, as it gets more and more impossible to see the night sky— Its vast, mysterious stretches pinpricked only by faint galaxy glow and the show of constellations our fathers first taught us to find, assembling like a cast of familiar characters against dark velvet curtains. Now, we shade our eyes from the blare of city lights, the gaudy jewels decorating every monument and tribute to wondrous architectures. Now, we seek places where it might still be possible to commune with the dark—open stretch of beach far away from tourist boardwalks, mountaintops where the sky at night still looks like an inverted cup pouring indigo into the throats of valleys. In some cultures, the newly dead are given sky burials. Birds of the air break down the flesh of the body before the bones are ground to dust. In the hill country of my birth, on shelves of limestone the dead are wrapped in gauze and seated in a row so in their passage between worlds, they have a view of both earth and sky.
Fountain
At night, its base was ringed with simple light. Only a slender column of water, frothing up from the center of the man- made lake. Yet it seemed larger in my recollection, even more than others I've seen in well-known parks— elaborate sprays tumbling outward in the shape of lotus flowers, rhythmic jets chasing each other in scallops. Perhaps by nature, our memories are flawed all the way through. Perhaps they're true only in so far as we need them to be: promise of eternal return, water that keeps giving though it draws over and over from the same source.
The Caregivers
...We are learning how to care for the dead, each in our own way. ~ Brian Turner They are so young, so patient: the three who give eight hours of each day to caring for our mother, our grandmother, because we can't be there ourselves. They take turns dampening her skin, changing her diapers, urging sips of water and blended Cerelac and banana; laying a cool cloth on her forehead in answer to the sometimes fevers. This is the stage called the end of life: we read that the body starts to need less and less of what it relied on for decades, flesh trimming away excess until we can almost discern the keel on which the hull was laid, the delicate bones of the wrist laddering up to the fingers. In phone videos, she shakes her head or calls the names of her ghosts; sometimes she has no clue. We say no more to the constant drawing of blood, to the checking of sugars. The body is folding into itself like its own prayer, heedless of time however long the transit.
Ritual for Leaving
We have our rituals, our ceremonies: what color of rice to make into sweet cakes for arrivals and departures, weddings or funerals. Why we place money bills in a pocket, or break the rosary cord before wrapping it around the hands of the dead. We say, go now; go sweet into the fields without borders, closing the old wounds as you go. Go without rancor, softening at last under the moon's copper sheen. Your face will remain as a lamp to all who are left in your wake; the flood of ache release from the dams in your feet.