The Dying Day

Late in the afternoon today, after I had just arrived at work, I sat in my car in the parking lot and listened to the conclusion of an audio essay by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, in which she chronicles the last months of the life of her father, who was dying of lung cancer. I did not find the story particularly profound, nor did I think it possessed generally newsworthy implications. These deficiencies notwithstanding, the story was incredibly poignant because of its honesty; there are truly personal moments, and LeBlanc struck me as particularly brave in selecting them for her piece.

While listening to the story and reflecting on its merits (and defects), I noticed how anemic the late afternoon sunlight appeared. The western end of the parking lot is shaded by a row of houses and eucalyptus trees, and the light's filtering through the foliage only added to its anemic quality. The sallow light seemed barely able to illuminate the autumn grass, and this, combined with the brisk, breeze atmosphere, made me consider the season.

Fall archetypally represents dying in the great cycle of life; likewise, November is the near the end of the calender year, and twilight is the death of the day. This great conflation of moribundity seemed nearly overwhelming.

In truth, it wasn't just the end-of-year, end-of-season, end-of-day trilogy that created the somber mood, nor was it simply the wan rays trickling in over the rooftops. My work in Torrance is less than two miles away from my gma's house, the house in which she received hospice care (just as LeBlanc's father had before his death)—the house in which she died three years ago this week.

All of these forces, the belabored sound of Mr. LeBlanc's voice on the radio, the withering light, the memory of my grandmother's passing, created a new impression of death. Instead instead of the black, dark, powerful, oppressive and forceful specter one usually conjures as a visual representation of death (think Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal), death began to look like a wasting away: the dying light filtering through the nearly weightless autumn leaves; the sound of LeBlanc's father's voice, faint, and barely a whisper; the body of my own grandmother weak and frail, so thin it barely made an impression under her bedsheets.

In typing out the last paragraph—the last clause in particular—I recall what she looked like immediately after she had passed. There was some disagreement among my family members whether my sister and I should be allowed to view her. One aunt remembered that my grandmother had not wanted any of the grandchildren to see her post mortem, for fear we would remember her (my grandma) as looking very sickly and moribund; on the other hand, another aunt said that that only applied to my three youngest cousins, who are impressionable and didn't have enough historical memory to distinguish my gma's normal appearance from the way she looked in her final months and weeks. In the end, the latter aunt prevailed, and I was left alone to 'say goodbye' (as they put it) to her for as long as I felt comfortable.

There was little 'comfort' being felt on my end, (and presumably even less on my grandmother's). A large part of the awkwardness stemmed from the fact that I did not know my grandmother as well as I should have—that is to say, I did not know her as well as she deserved to have been known. (The subsequent guilt about this fact hitting me as I stumbled for words did not make it easier to compose a cogent monologue as I sat beside her.) It was like a conversation with someone with whom one shares only a vague friendship: too little confidence for a truly intimate heart-to-heart, but too much familiarity to employ the vapid pleasantries usually reserved for new acquaintances. Perhaps the only advantage I felt in that situation is that my grandmother remained in death, as she always had in life, infinitely patient: she lay there peacefully without adding undue pressure for me to fill the uneasy silence between us. Nonetheless, the fact that the burden of carrying the conversation, usually distributed more or less evenly among the interlocutors, fell entirely to me, and the complex layers of emotion brought on by the death of a close relative, made for a formula that felt like a very gauche soliloquy stumbling toward its end.

This is not to say that I regret having sat beside my grandma's emaciated corpse, nor that I would change what I said to her, or how I said it. Perhaps it is only to note that there are some situations in which there is no socially sanctioned response, or cheeky witticism that can dispel the tension. Sometimes there are only honest responses, and those that are less honest, but not necessarily less appropriate.

Below is a Longfellow poem, absolutely germane for this posting. Even if you usually skip the outside poems I include in my blog, check out the one below:

The Day is Done
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.