The blog is such the lunar business. I am reminded of the time during the 1980s when an eclipse lasted for several minutes. Upstairs from my son’s bedroom window, we viewed beside the giant Magnolia into the neighborhood intersection–that strange light, not moonlight, not daylight, a mix of opposing lights in a dark light or bright shadow–not even twilight. It had a funny feeling to it, a light sensation of a day cloaked in mystery — still clear, but in shade. I like to capture the turns and twists of the experiencing of Vic’s “night sea journey,” this, as it is also known, “the dark night of the soul,” from life into the shades of the other side, but lately nothing much was happening, a little more withdrawl, a little more progressive weakness. Then, one day, she cried again, and we in attendance couldn’t figure out why. We had been looking into the backyard and talking about how we had worked so hard at it. We asked her why she was crying, and she said, “Last things.”
I remembered how she cried when her son had left weeks ago to go home to the West coast, “the last time I’ll see him,” she said. And, then recently, The Annual Fish Fry at her oldest brother’s house: a fine day, in wheelchair, but sunny and bright, good pictures, a good time had by all. Then, as we got into the car, I knew why Vic cried, the last one. Then just a few days ago, planning Thanksgiving, same “last things.” Yes, it all seems like viewing time through a telescope, an eclipse of normal day; then we really got a curve ball.
Sarah (her cousin) and I were talking with Vic. I was reporting on the “tornado” house, the one that got hit on 27 April 14. I was explaining how it was going to be closed (sold) soon, how we had worked on it so much since then, and now that we are out of it, everything is fixed after we lived it in it so long, and how it looked before, with the garage still there, and blah, blah, blah–we looked over and Vic was crying. Sometimes we don’t ask her why, but this time we just had to–everything seemed so innocent: She answered: “The tornado house, when I didn’t know I had cancer.” Sarah and I just looked at each other, struck by the obvious logic of it, I guess–the stun of living in an adumbrated, short-lived frame of mind now, the two lives, one “normal” in the past, and one “eclipsed” now with the immanent change of standing at death’s door. It had an “of course” quality to it and seemed to point out once again how matters looked to her, how reasonable, if one was the one in the hot seat. The sheer burden to carry one’s death in this strange, eclipsed light of awareness drew closer to us–“the life I had when I didn’t have cancer”–in life, not going out.
Postscript: An old movie came on last night, “Out of Africa,” but the movie doesn’t matter so much, but the background musical score was a good one to capture the arc of life covered in the drama as good movies do. I was just watching along, but toward the end, the images got to “last things.” And then I thought of us and heard the musical score in our own movie when the scenes of life were playing when this movie came out, our days filled with the ordinary life ongoing: the image of my own office through the years, our rides together with her looking out the window to the countrysides in all weathers, lighted hallways in shadow and light with her great taste in furniture, waving to each other from our cars, her rushing to work, and the evening light, soft and amber, mostly in rooms, that twilight of sundown on her face, a magazine opened, her long hours on the screened-in porches, sitting alone into the gathering darkness, “centering,” we called it–our life–and then I could cry with heart-felt understanding, remembering and listening to our song of life playing in the background, the eternal now of life then, before the tornado hit, before the cancer.
The young James Version 