I need to write about this…the dying thing. Push away. Push it way, far away. Do…hands stuck on the keyboard, finger reluctant to move, fear of the pain of dying, not my death. The death of those I love. Yesterday, Sunday, December 29 I learned from a friend of the death of a two-year old girl. A child who went to bed with flu symptoms and never woke up. Pema, Pema, how do you breathe that kind of pain into your own heart? In order to be a writer I must not hold back but to touch this pain, the reality of children dying is….is what? Unspeakable? Beyond comprehension? I cannot imagine there to be a greater void than the one created by the loss of a child, one’s own child. To enter the sanctuary of your child’s room and find them breathless, lifeless. The wailing, the screaming, the sense of outrage, desperation, are there words for such a scene? How do we as parents ever sleep knowing that our children may not awaken? When my son Jordan died 4 years ago on January 3rd, he was exhausted, tired from a long week of rehearsal. He came home from New York to be in Pippin, the opening show at the newly built Playhouse on the Square. He was tired, but then Jordan is always tired so instead of driving home and going to bed, he went to the Blue Monkey Bar. Within minutes he was lying on the floor dead. His heart had stopped. The bar tender, a nurse in training, performed CPR on him until the EMTs arrived. Had he gone home, he would have died alone in bed. We were gone, away in Pennsylvania. Thank God, thank God he is alive today.
Amelia, my grandchild is here now. I picked her up early today because her Daddy is now sick. We think he has the flu. Katie is better. Greg is sick. Amelia lives. She is here, now, with us in her princess tent.
Breathe, breathe all pain, all joy, into my heart. May I have enough of all that life offers…suffering and happiness in equal measure. In the words of Dani Shapiro, “Are we using every last bit of ourselves, living these lives of ours,spending it, spending it all, every single day?”
Writing into the Light 