I tiptoe around your bed
quietly gathering whispered fragments,
as delicate
as floating petals of plum blossoms,
hoping to piece them together
into an arrangement that suits
We hold hands, and together,
we skirt the edges of the dangerous hole
that is hiding
regrets and unfinished business
Your clutch on me is so tight
that at night I will dream
that dogs bite my hands:
no blood,
just sharp teeth that pierce the skin
and jaws that won’t relinquish
don’t lose me don’t lose me
I scan your body for signs
is it time is it time
Counting breaths and eyelid flutters,
I wonder what you dream of
And I cry for you, missing the moon
and the warm breeze
And I remember the story of the leaves
that followed you in your grief
and I whisper back
you will never lose me
you will never be lost
Susan M. Berry
I wrote this poem in my hotel room in New York City, late at night, during my last week with my beloved Aunt Sara. I had spent many days sitting at her bedside, both before, and after, she slipped into another realm. While utterly heartbreaking, watching and listening to someone who is preparing for death is a sacred, intimate experience. I made note of everything she said, and tried to piece together what was going on inside her head, her heart, her soul, as she was coming to grips with the end of this life. It was the end of August, the leaves were turning color and rustling restlessly in the warm wind, as if waiting impatiently for what was to come. Across the street from where my aunt was spending her last days was the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Throughout the long days, I needed many breathers, so I would visit the cathedral. If you want to come in to pray, you don’t have to pay the admission fee, and with my tearful face, they never questioned, just motioned me in. More often, I would spend time in the garden, studying the Peace Fountain, and listening to the sounds of the wind. The poem tries to capture what this time was like, and the dreams I had each night.
This was taken in Old Man House Park, in Suquamish, Washington, which is near the grave of Chief Si’ahl (Chief Seattle), who lived in a long house on this site. The park holds special meaning for me, having visited it once, and his grave, with my grandmother when I was around the age of 6. The petals were falling from the trees, the new grass was lush and green beneath our bare feet, and we had a beach picnic on the shores of Agate Passage. I remember us walking through the trees, hand in hand, full of delight at the petals fluttering all around us. Though they were from different sides of my family, my aunt and my grandmother were close friends.
The night I wrote this poem, there was a rare super blue moon. The moon watched me through the window of my hotel room, on the 67th floor of the tallest hotel in North America, a room where I spent many weeks over the span of the years I was my aunt’s “person”. I always picked this room because it faced away from the overly bright lights of Times Square, and I always crave absolute dark for sleep. This night, there would be no sleep, and the light of the moon was comforting to me, and made the lights of Manhattan seem inconsequential in the scope of what I was processing. (I highly recommend the Midtown Manhattan Residence Inn off Broadway – the location is perfect for traveling to any part of Manhattan, and the staff treated me like family, always miraculously finding room for me in the sold out hotel, when I kept extending my stay, day, after day, after day.)
The reference to the “leaves that followed you in your grief” is a story my aunt shared with me. After her husband, Joe, died, on two separate occasions, she spotted a dried maple leaf, Joe’s favorite. The first time, she was seated on a bench at one of their favorite spots in New York, and it was late Spring, long past the time when dried leaves would be on the ground. It danced around her in the breeze, and she knew it was him. The second time, she was in Italy, visiting Joe’s family, and the leaf appeared again, in the cemetery. There were no maple trees anywhere, and she knew he had traveled there to be with her. She found great comfort in it. When I cleaned out her apartment after she died, I found the leaf, tucked into a special place. I treasure it, as she did, and it brings me comfort, too.
