He carried no life insurance; he scorned it as “betting on when you’re going to die.” He finally drew up a legal will, at her pleading, but it references a safety-deposit box at a bank that no longer exists.
Joe’s only system of organization was piles, and piles of piles. In the days following his death, she worked with a terrible dull urgency to bring order to it, to find what needed to be found. She’s still working. It must be done; it won’t be done soon.
What Joan has to do, now, is make sense of a life in pieces.
Friday, December 31, 2004
He struck out from home at sixteen alone, hitching, as he often did for the first half of his life. He dyed his forelocks white-blond (his little sister told us, the admiration still in her voice) and drove a muscle car, which got stolen. He loved water; he joined the Coast Guard.
He always returned to Kentucky. He was a son of Kentucky, and the Kellys who settled its Kelly Ridge.
His fishing buddy Jimmy described a bridge over the Kentucky River where Joe would go, on hot days. Eighty feet at least, he said, from the surface; and Joe dove.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Hell, my mother has absently mentioned, is her husband’s visitation. It’s hours of standing when she wants to lie down, anywhere, forever. It’s a line out the door. It’s the endless upkeep of her bravest face while people, so many people, tell her exactly the same things.
Dante had Virgil when he walked into Hell for love. Orpheus failed to bring back Eurydice, and it cost him his mind.
How do you stay human when you have twice walked into Hell, guideless? How do you learn to be yourself again, when you have twice walked out, and your love stayed behind?
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Joe’s business card says “Joe Wood, Builder.”
The first house Joe built for himself was a refurbished two-room schoolhouse. I’ve seen it only in pictures. The second stands unfinished at Kelly Ridge, on land settled by his ancestors–built, after his first marriage ended, by a man intent on being single forever.
The third is my mother’s apartment in Richmond, which he finished a month ago, just in time for their first anniversary. It’s so beautiful. To walk into it is to know its beauty, and understand that one man built it perfectly, with his hands, for the woman he loved.
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
The only response to “I’m sorry” is “thank you,” because “I’m sorry” is such a flimsy response to death. So is a casserole, or a hug–do you really think that what she needs, right now, is another hug?
But of course such gifts are not really for the grieving.
This is the only appropriate gift for a widow: a minute of your life. A minute you would have spent breathing and loving, with your eyes open, warm. A minute from your long and many days, to bring your death that much closer, and let the two of them say goodbye.
Monday, December 27, 2004
I hope you will forgive me this shift in person and mode. I find that at the moment I have no other voice.
My stepfather, Joseph Benjamin Wood, died in his sleep early Wednesday morning. He was the first person to submit his Master’s thesis in poetry at Eastern Kentucky University. Joe gave up such writing before he met my mother, but he never ceased to love words in economy: he chose them, as he chose all things, carefully and well.
I have been reading his books, his Thoreau and his Whitman, to find the words with which to say goodbye.
Friday, December 24, 2004
“Because I just filled the tank!” Dad shout-says.
“Do you want to take turns?” says Mom coldly. “Do you want a chart on the refrigerator, Edmund?”
“God!” yells Gilly. “You guys!”
“Go feed the rabbits, Gilly,” they say together.
Gilly slams the door so hard the house falls down like a deck of cards: the roof flutters away over the collapsing walls, and her parents stand speechless in the middle of the kitchen rubble except not really. If only.
She stomps out to the hutch to pitch food at Fur-Fur and Bingo, who, like every day, look astounded to see her.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
“These things are worthless,” mutters Fred. “Sure, my forelegs were tiny. But if I wanted to move a flap of hide, dig for meat, okay, I didn’t have to shove my whole face in!” He looks really upset, for a nuthatch.
“Hey, I’m on your side,” says Gary, a swallow. “I had these… pointy thumb things, and–”
“Exactly! And now we get this crap!” Fred does an angry flapping dance. “Wings! The hell do I need wings for? Eating berries or fucking seeds?”
“Evolution,” sighs Gary. “Biggest mistake we ever made.”
“Right!” snaps Fred. “Let’s fix that!”
So they do.
Monday, December 20, 2004
Dresden feels things turn inside out. His vision’s broken and he can’t walk. He braces himself against the wall and tries to vomit, managing only a mouthful of sour bile. He spits on the ugly carpet; it’s the same ochre yellow as the drink AJ handed him at the bar, calling it a Pissguzzler. He smiled. He had green eyes. Dresden wanted to show off, so he slammed it, then another, and not long after he was feeling much too drunk, too heavy, and as he felt the air cool on his sudden legs he wondered what “AJ” actually stood for.
Friday, December 17, 2004
Real coma victims don’t always recline with that kind of dignity, of course. Every other day, Somerset and somebody else (usually Caillie) go through the ward and flip them like pancakes. Somerset does the flipping; Caillie negotiates the IVs.
“What do you when I’m on vacation?” he grunts, wedging an arm under Ms. Whenzel.
“Wait until you get back,” she smiles. “We can’t all be big strong male nurses.”
“And if I ever move to another ward?”
“We’ll just leave them,” she says dismissively, “until their bones burrow all the way down and out, and they float away like big jellyfish.”
Thursday, December 16, 2004