Dead Letter Department #59

weather report

First of the irises, my neighbor’s, out on their sunny corner, first of the poppies & the pink columbine, & the last of the lilacs, pristine sweetness taking on that faint smell of decay. It’s warm enough that I waded in up to my thighs last night down at the boardwalk & very seriously considered just how close my boxers would look to swim trunks if I did decide to shed my shorts & go in all the way—not anywhere near close enough, I decided. It’s fully wading season, though, & I finally had the good sense to get an extra pair of water shoes to keep in the car so I’m never unready to put my feet in.

The tide was low enough on Saturday that my niece & I splashed around the point & under the railway trestle, all the way to the brackish pond, where we found approximately a million snails, & strange cerulean-bellied isopod cast offs. “This one’s inhabited,” she kept saying, & hucking them back into the water, until we finally found an empty shell to carry back to the beach & show the rest of her family.

When I got to the hospital, there was a guy just getting out of the car across the way, an unlit cigarette dangling out of his mouth & a full half gallon of cranberry juice in his hand. I put on some speed, hoping to catch up enough to get a sense of what his deal could possibly be at that hour of the morning, but he peeled off across the parking lot, & now I will never know.

The hospital is one of my least favorite places. Every time I go seems to contain all the other times, a nesting doll of scary late night ER visits, unclear diagnoses, the ever present fear that someone petty & powerful in the moment might have a stupid opinion about queer people & use it as a cudgel in a dangerous moment. There’s no avoiding it, though, not if you want to show up for people, so I smack the little paper name tag on & smear the chemical smelling sanitizer over my hands & nod politely to the saint statues on my way to the rickety elevator.

I even get into a little routine about it: park on the same side, get coffee afterwards, largely so I can tell myself there will be some small pleasant thing to grip onto. My friend is dying. I brought her a big bouquet of lilacs, because I always used to leave them on her desk at work, where we met, and I held her hand, which was too warm, while the doctor explained what her choices are. She is clear on what she wants, & I am grateful for that, because I am supposed to help her communicate them when she can’t anymore. The paperwork said a lot of things, but that’s basically what it meant.

She is clear, & she is ready, & she has asked me to help, but I haven’t done this before. There are certain categories of disaster I feel somewhat prepared for, because I’ve been through them enough to know the beats, but I haven’t sat at someone’s bedside like this while they told me they were done. “I’ve had enough,” she said. “I’ve done what I wanted.”

“It’s a privilege,” someone else I love told me recently, when we were taking about caretaking, & it is, but it’s heavy too.

I’ll probably tell you more about my friend soon, but I’m trying to avoid anticipatory grief, that anxiety-riddled desire to get out ahead of the big bad emotions so they don’t hit as hard. It never works. It takes you out of what you’re feeling now in a desperate attempt to siphon off what’s going to happen then, but that massive wave is still coming towards you, and it’ll sweep the shore whether or not you spent all the time beforehand imaging how it’ll feel when it hits.

“I’ll see you tomorrow if I can, or the next day,” I told my friend when I was leaving, and she shook her head. “Don’t make yourself crazy coming too often,” she said, and then she told me to stay out of trouble. I’m doing my best.

one good thing

I was driving around yesterday, having accidentally ended up on the college campus coming back from the bay, & popped out right in front of a Taco Time, which I had literally just been talking about, so I took it as a sign that tater fries were necessary for my immediate well-being. The person working the drive through had the fiercest eyeliner, a perfect black knife flick of a cat eye, & a single dangling silver earring. They were moving too fast for me to compliment them, but I’m convinced that getting handed a bag of soft tacos with such style increased my enjoyment of dinner by a considerable percentage, & gave the tater fries especially an extra savor.

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I hope to see you here at the Dead Letter Department again soon, & in the meantime, may your eyeliner remain impeccably sharp.