I have reached the age where memories become immediate and enlarged, a continuous slide show passing through my mind.
- Following my crawling daughter across the Columbia University campus at 116th St. and Broadway, worrying that she will pick up and ingest the cigarette butts or metal beer can pull-off tops littering the sidewalk.
- A snap of a fearful 14-year old me standing with my parents and my speech teacher in front of an auditorium somewhere in Los Angeles, waiting to appear in the American Legion speech contest, knowing I, a sophomore, was up against (gasp!) seniors.
- Fast forward to hanging around the edges of a Parisian fountain in 1999 with my two (then) boys, a trip we got to do a few times from our base in London.
- Flip to the basement of a ranch-style suburban house in Silver Spring, Maryland at 5:00am in the 1990s, where I am plowing through a pile of classified documents I brought home from the office to review, before I help the kids get up and then scurry off down Georgia Ave. for another 12-hour day of stress and joy in the Old Executive Office Building.
- Fast-forward to sitting in orange Adirondack chairs outside The Dolphin at the edge of Harpswell Neck, Maine, sharing a glass of wine with my then wife and watching the sunset over one of the most beautiful harbors and ocean views on the East Coast.
- Then to sleeping in a tent with my girlfriend decades earlier, inside the racetrack at Le Mans, well, not sleeping because of the engine noise of the 24-hour Le Mans driving race whirling around us.
- Another spin and I am twirling my 13-year old daughter around the living room of a summer group house in Bethany Beach, Delaware, just before she lands on my foot and breaks my second toe, right foot.
- Then to the Yucatan near the temples at Palenque where I am skinny-dipping with my brother down a series of waterfalls in the tropical forest.
The memories arrive and disappear in a flash. This is a new slide show for me, vastly more interesting than the travelogues my mother once made us sit through.
They are a kind of “Life Review,” something I am participating in all year. It’s a class of 600, offered by Spirit Rock meditation center in Northern California, around a book by StephenLevine, A Year to Live. We imagine, work through, meditate on our lives as if they will end by next January.
It's a valuable journey, the journey most of us do when we have passed our “sell by” date – the life expectancy of around 78, in my case, for a white American assigned male sex at birth. Three years past my sell-by date and still kicking.
And reflecting. My metaphor for this time in my life is trees falling in the forest. When I was young, I could hear the rare report far ahead of me crashing to the forest floor. At middle age, the thuds were closer. In my 70s, I could see them fall, pine needles whipping through their neighbors. It was still not me. Today they fall all around and behind me with a deafening sound.
Every day seem to bring an opportunity to welcome grief. As I write, a friend is off to visit her mother, who has just been admitted to hospice. Another friend texts me that her cancer has spread through her whole body and she is trying to decide whether to do treatment of some kind, or just let it be. Last night, the teacher at my Sangha showed us drawings by a Japanese artist of the stages of disintegration of the body after death – a graphic, moving experience.
Death comes to us all. The road there is signposted with memories and the conditions we face.
The grieving, the celebration, the memories flow like the waters of the Dniepro River rushing through a massive breach in the dam.
In recognition of the passings and to grieve again and honor the love that has left, I offer this poem I wrote in honor of Marcio Calles Martinez Fernandez, my brother’s late husband, my first even published in print poem, just out in Crosswinds Poetry Journal. Dear, lively, lovely Marcio, who died just over two years ago. Another memory passing through.
Ropa de Recuerdo
Sheer white guayabera that showed his thin chest
hangs now on a metal hanger.
The musk remains,
the odor of his hair on my shoulder.
A party guy, mouth hammering rat-a-tat-tat,
waving his Pall Mall in a smoky figure eight,
inviting a boogie, an embrace,
or a daisy chain of desire.
It was a glance across a crowded room,
invited, wordless, unannounced
oh, so reciprocated, waiting at my door
an irresistible invitation to disrobe.
I breathed with his breath
as his lungs withered,
his tortured inhalation shrinking him
to a flaco recollection of my lover.
The closet hangs with his presence,
detective noir leather coats,
Skin-tight jackets
Impervious to the music of our dance.
I give our love away one garment at a time.
Love the poem. And your kaleidescope of memories.