Whispers & Crashes

Records spin to a close, and so do people. As a DJ working in retirement homes, I get to cherish both.

Helen, Part I

Voices. I woke from a sound sleep at 4:25 am. The dead of night is a phrase that hides in plain sight, like how good Elvis is. Cliché obscures.

The darkness hung heavy, the crickets chirping with weighted wings. The sound, again, too distant to make out. Neighbors? I peered out the window. Nothing, and then only crickets. The silence was so loud, I put on the noise machine to drown it out.

An instant later, the clock radio sputtered a saccharine country song about a guy married to his best friend. “Har har, another I walk the line to convince her of fidelity” I grumbled, waving my hand around until it found the Off button.

Cynicism films over sadness. Grumbling is easier than feeling. Jung said “neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering.” I know what he means. The text arrived yesterday. “You might want to stop by.” But I was three hours to the east then. I’d try today.

I scrubbed, combed, brushed, and thought I ought to button. This isn’t a T-shirt visit.

Finally, to the car, and off into the cool morning. The wheels bumped twice over the tracks as the phone rang, and she told me.

“Helen died this morning.”

I thanked the dear boss lady for the kindness of letting me know, turned around, and went home.

***

Rose

“Mannn, I think these times are a spiritual battle” I told him. Rusty sat at the counter, grimy, nodding, tattooed, sooty, earnest.

“I feel you.”

He had stopped by to give the a quote about putting up a stovepipe. I caught a case of sticker shock for what the materials cost. It was a no. But he sat there with a glass of water, and we started talking about the world, and what we might do about it, and how to stay strong.

Any media elite would shudder at the sight of us, and point the finger. They’d be wrong.

“Hey man, I wrote this book about the COVID time, which really changed my perspective. Lemme get you a copy.” I dashed off to the closet, fishing around on the top shelf, and ohhhh no! CRASH.

"You alright, dude?”

“Yeah yeah, had to organize that stack of stuff anyway.”

Then I forgot about it. The closet door was closed.

All during the writing of Cities on a Hill, I wished I had kept a diary of the time, something to put me back in it. My memory is sometimes sharp, and sometimes not. This is what I drew from a time after when I sat down to write the book. I had re-written a poem I had lost, and that version made it to print:

Hallway Snapshot: Rose

I brought her a palm for Sunday once

From the second church

(The first one was guarded about heir holy botany)

We watched mass on the livestream

I saw her in hospice when she was dying

(not of COVID)

Surfacing through a morphine sea

She smiled at me.

(P. 149)

I crashed the shelf on a Monday. I went back on Tuesday, remembering the wreckage, and seeing what happened. A journal had fallen off the shelf. I opened it to this, the first draft of the poem I had written the first time around. The missing poem, handed to me.

6/1/21

She looked up

through a morphine haze

The clouds parted for a shining instant

as she smiled at me

The Eternal Everyday

Razor Focus of the Deathbed

I told her I loved her

and left.

A nurse interrupted her cheeseburger

to point me the way out.

I don’t know what to think about ghosts. I don’t know what to think about any of this.

I found another journal, where I sketched out a plan long ago with projected growth of fans to adore what I did, transcendent of the world from a big stage and the lights of an artificial god.

I put it back down, glad that genies aren’t real.

Helen, Part II

Sitting at the light this morning, returning from my short trip, the mist rose in front of my eyes. I’m leveled, demolished, broken open in the best of ways that I even get to attempt to say goodbye.

“I’m gonna learn to walk again, and then we can dance” she’d say. I’d pick her up and we’d sway to “Dancing in the Street” in the meantime.

I sure will miss her.