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The First Night
The worst thing about death must be
the first night.
—Juan Ramón Jiménez
Before I opened you, Jiménez,it never occurred to me that day and nightwould continue to circle each other in the ring of death, but now you have me wonderingif there will also be a sun and a moonand will the dead gather to watch them rise and set then repair, each soul alone,to some ghastly equivalent of a bed.Or will the first night be the only night, a darkness for which we have no other name?How feeble our vocabulary in the face of death,How impossible to write it down. This is where language will stop,the horse we have ridden all our livesrearing up at the edge of a dizzying cliff. The word that was in the beginningand the word that was made flesh—those and all the other words will cease. Even now, reading you on this trellised porch,how can I describe a sun that will shine after death?But it is enough to frighten me into paying more attention to the world’s day-moon,to sunlight bright on wateror fragmented in a grove of trees, and to look more closely here at these small leaves,these sentinel thorns,whose employment it is to guard the rose.
-Billy Collins
My friend Nina died today. She had Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS. If there is a crueler disease, please don't tell me about it right now.
Nina wanted me around more and more as she navigated this disease, as she quickly lost the ability to walk, to talk, to swallow because, as she told me in one of the thousands of notes on yellow legal pads she wrote to me as her speech failed her: 1) I didn't look at her with a sad woeful face every time I saw her; 2) because I calmed her down when she panicked and 3) because I didn't panic when she choked on her own saliva but acted, instead, like it was the most normal thing in the world and in fact, like I did it all the time too. She also liked me because I made her laugh. Unfortunately she often laughed so hard that she choked on her own saliva, see point #3, above.
I love her for too many reasons to number.
Nina wrote a book about professional boundaries in the healing arts that is considered a classic. It is used as a textbook in many, many programs for massage therapists and other bodyworkers. She told me when the third edition came out recently that it is the thing she was most proud of in her life.
When the funeral home came for her body, I had to stifle the urge to run away with her instead. Instead, I simply asked if she could be taken in her favorite comforter and cremated with it. I heard myself say, "It will make her feel better because it's poofy" and "She loved it and it will comfort her." Irrational? Perhaps. But I knew that tonight might be the loneliest for her and that her comforter would help.
No, that's not actually it. Tonight I realized that Nina is fine, romping through fields of gold carrying what that comforter represents, flying and soaring and, as my friend Kathryn Ruth Schuth said, most likely laughing her ass off (and without an ounce of choking, I might add). This poem isn't about the person who died, is it? Tonight will be the loneliest for me, not for Nina. The worst thing about death must be the first night for those of us left behind looking at the significant, rending holes left by their departure. I have cried myself into a headache, I am bereft. I am different. I am exhausted. And I am deeply honored to have been invited in.
May Nina's life and death remind me to look more closely here at these small leaves, these sentinel thorns, whose employment it is to guard the rose. I will write more about these past few extraordinary sleep-deprived and love-fueled days soon. There has been much, much learning. For now, I must deeply sleep and simply honor this extraordinary human.
Nina, I love you dearly. Hold my snake, Goober. "F" to the 6th Power. Thank you for inviting me in.
