Carolina and the co-editor of
hotmetralpress are one and the
same. Check her our there.

Carolina has been writing what
she hopes to be a novel-- some
true, some not about her
daughter's death.

I am testing the first part here
on  hotmetalpress.  It is difficult
to keep on keeping on with this
topic so I am using this as a
testing ground.  If rotten eggs
and tomatoes start flying at me I
will know what to do.

Turning off the Light

Death’s beauty is unspeakable. This is why God created the dark and
the final dark. Cover the radiance of such beauty.  Even grief cannot
lift its head and look. Dark inhales the moon; exhaling, ravishing,
the stars.
Karen was like the calm moon lying on water.  Her skin had long
become a yellow petal painted by jaundice.  Yet perfect.  The
straight small nose, cheekbones like an Egyptian Queen, this slight
resting upon the pillow.
A moment at her side and she suddenly raised her head where masses of
dark curls had fallen across the now lost, the now weeping and
infected skull.  She raised her head and opened her eyes, but not in
fear. Long ago Karen had ferried across that bleak river. Her eyes
shone like ancient amber and the look was of amazement.  
She had seen God.
Yes, I know that she saw Him.   I have dreamed that look often.  Try
to imagine someone dying, Karen dying, really dying. It is difficult
for me to think this.  Someone dying and the room does not exist,
nothing is important, indeed, nothing  exists; only her mysterious
bright eyes burning into light of her room and seeing -- seeing
beyond all  nothing.
Her head fell back to the pillow.   The mutilated breast still rose
and fell to the beat of my lullaby.
Imagine a gardenia, what resolve the petals summon to open in fierce
increments of time. We think of the deep fragrance and the perfection
which one touch will bruise.  Karen’s death was this imperceptible
opening and light filling the room until, in the stilled end, the
incandescence of a new star lay upon her bed .The surrender of the
Gardenia.
The house was full of her family but I can remember only William
there, and Phoebe asking to see her mother. Then, we three, William,
Phoebe, and I standing at the bed, I remember the sheer curtain
moving with sunlit May air. It had only been a moment, slight as a
breath; -- immense, like a great tsunami flung in from the cosmos,
yet simple, only a moment.  Karen was gone.  Her hand was still warm
and small, and swollen soft and sweet as an infant’s. I remember the
curtain blowing so delicately as if to tell us a secret.
They put her into the darkness of a body bag.   They sprayed her skin
pink; they covered her bloated stomach with a white flowered kimono.  
I put lipstick on her lips; I put eyes shadow on her closed eyes, I
rouged her cheeks.  But Karen’s ivory beauty had journeyed far with
her soul.  My hands touched her smooth skin, her lips that seemed to
want to speak or kiss, but I touched nothing.  
How many nights did I awaken calling out “I want her back!”  
Believing it!  Believing that if I called hard and loud and sobbed to
Christ, the pity of all the stars and moons and the entire universe
would give her back to me:  my grief like a death.  I wanted her back
and I would get her back!

We were in my convertible on that warm April day, on the way to her
radiation appointment.  The top was down, spring had brought some
bursts of blossoms on wild apple trees and the sun was warm.  Karen
slid down in the seat and bent her head back. I thought she wanted to
feel the sun and the warm air as if never before had she felt them
and never again would she feel them like this.   It was all I could
do to again erase the pain of these thoughts and once more I battled
to believe, will, that she would live.
All the while I was taking pills to not feel and Karen was taking
pills not to feel and together we gave up our rights to experience
the dark,we kept it at bay as if we held out a long heavy branch to
keep off a vicious dog.
It should have been I.  It should have been I who walked with the
pronged cane down the hospital corridor to the elevator.   People
staring at the somehow incongruous straight wig.  Karen, whose hair
had always been curly and charming, I should have been leaning on
Karen, not my child leaning on me.  We walked slowly.  Both of us
patient, giving us time to touch each painful step on the polished
floor.
“Honey” I said, “Honey, you can beat this... It will be hard”
Patiently and quietly, wearily Karen replied, “Mom, mom, mom,” as if
I were the child, “People die you know...”
What could I say now, what could I say?  My mind raced for words to
confront this thought from the dark.  “Yes, but not now honey”   and
she started to whimper, only whimper, so I held my daughter and felt
her body stiffen from me.  We never mentioned death again.
She never cried or whimpered again.  Yet I think today that Karen had
always forgiven me for this cowardice.  It was in her to fight
against every injustice and she wanted to be able to fight this
lowering of the light with all her brave sweet life.  She was a
warrior.  She did not need me or anyone to say she was beaten.  There
would be no truce unto the end.
Last night I went to a party where among three of the women, three
dead children clung with shyness of the dead or the tenacity of
children and their mothers.  Two of the children were suicides.  One
never spoke about her boy; her grief was captured in the blank stare
of her eyes. His death was unimaginable.  She lived as she had always
lived.  The other held her son up as Abraham had raised Jacob above
the sacrificial altar.  Her eyes shone with a strange, almost
demented light as she told about the beauty of her dead son.  And I,
I could not speak about Karen without the shaking voice and the
retching stomach as I fought to hold back the tears which possessed
me and which held those who heard me captive in my anguish. I turned
away from these listeners carrying my leprosy of tears like a child
in my body.
“So Kare, let’s think about some of the dumb things about Jude“
We were in the old blue Jeep on our way to a small lake to go
swimming.  Phoebe was in the back in her car seat blowing bubbles
with spit.  Karen thought a moment,
“He farts in bed.”   It was Karen’s usual unexpected kind of humor, a
sense of the absurd.  It was so good to laugh with her. She had been
staying with me in the old house on Liberty Street for months since
her separation from Jude. I loved having her and Baby Phoebe with
me.  
It was difficult to get Phoebe to eat.  She was a tiny beautiful
butterfly and probably meant to be slender, but we worried and tried
everything to get her to eat.  One time Karen
was playing the harmonica to the tune of “Have you ever seen a lassie
go this way and that way,”  and I was doing a soft shoe to the tune
just as they had taught my fifth grade to do for the school play, a
thousand years ago.  Phoebe was really amused and we could sneak in
mouthfuls of baby food.  It was one of the happiest times.  You
remember that don’t you Karen?

Sometimes when I think back on these memories, so clear, so intensely
sweet, I wonder what this is all about Karen, I mean, one minute I
can see you grinning and playing that harmonica and then I have to
put it together with the thin withered face on the pillow, dying,
dying.  I mean I get confused about which is which or what is what
and just want to scream WHERE ARE YOU KAREN!!  But there never is an
answer unless the answer is in the silence of that scream.
*******

“Peter do you want to play Indians?”  He was lying on the floor on
his back studying the crack that inched incrementally each day across
the ceiling.  He could chart it with the sunlight that made an angle
across the room.  Peter looked up at his sister standing with her
Indian cowhide skirt on, her sun brown arms akimbo. Next thing they
were gliding like spirits in the brush outside the house...  the
field that hugged the woods and the wet land where the wild purple
irises grew.  They appeared and disappeared, at the same time chasing
each other and running away.  Their stick bows poised to pierce each
other’s heart.
Karen and Peter running clutching each others’ hands, fleeing the
storm that hung above their heads, down the cement sidewalk from
Bernie’s’ house around the corner.  Lightening like arrows poised
above there heads.  From the window above the sink how suddenly clear
and small they were.  In my arms I am saying to them.  “Please, you
must always be careful because if anything hurts you I will never
stop crying.  ....I will never stop crying;” their small wet faces
looking grave and shining at me.
How fragile we are, how fragile, like a dried bouquet.  How
untouchable is existence.  I wanted to show you the Wisteria, Karen,
the Tulip trees, the weeping Chinese maples I planted for you in
neighborhoods you never dreamed.  I wanted to show you the paintings
your babies painted in summer times with me.
I see them Mama, with my eyes wide as death where I saw everything, I
see my beautiful babies and their dreams.  I can see this and in that
moment before I died when I opened my eyes I saw everything that is.  
That’s the face God Mom, that’s what it’s like!  
She was there!!!  Oh dearest God and all the saints and angels, Sweet
Jesus she was there, in front of me, no, no, in front of my mind.  
How can I explain this vision?  You won’t believe me but in my mind
she was there.  When I say in my mind, it is as if a membrane was all
around us.  Outside of this membrane was a vast panorama of everyday
life.  I could see people walking city streets, sweating people.  I
could see babies taking their wobbly steps.  I could see people
snorting drugs.  I could see great cranes and heavy machines laboring
with their operators in the heaviness of life.  I could even see
myself, sleepy eyed and the dogs running in, Posy jumping on the bed
and licking my elbow until I had to jump out of bed or endure this
unwanted bath.  Yes, there I was, it was me but some clone of me
doing what I do.  Yet here I was, inside this membrane kind of thing
And I was with Karen at the same time.  
“Karen! What’s happening?  Karen!”  I was touching her beautiful
hair, wild about her face that was like nothing I have ever seen.  It
was made of LIGHT, yet I could touch it and feel her incredibly
smooth skin which I can only describe as pure.
“It’s okay Mom, It’s me.  It’s really me.  Isn’t this cool?”
“But honey, how can I touch you, you were cremated.... against my
better judgment ---but William said that was what you wanted”
“Oh Mom don’t go practical on me. That’s not my Mom.   Can’t you see
that this is like nothing we could ever know or experience?”
“Wait a minute honey.... I said over and over that I wanted you back
but I didn’t mean I wanted to be dead.... am... I...dead then? “    
“If you want a yes or no, there is no way to say that.  In a way you
are dead but you are as alive as you ever were.  Here, hold my hand.”
I held her hand; I kissed her hand.  It was glorious.  How soft and
sweet and small it was.  I had my baby back!  There were colors
around us like the northern lights but the colors made music and when
I listened it was as if the whole universe was speaking in tongues
but I could understand and hear each voice distinctly and each sound
of each intense color was so heartbreakingly sweet..  Each love song
was different but blended with all the others into one and I could
not bear it.
“Here Mama, sit here and just sleep a little while.”  
A chair had appeared.  I was in Karen’s old bedroom at our home and I
fell asleep and she held my hand...
Do I have the courage to do this?  Can I take this journey into the
dark?  Can I bear the light?  Yet I reach out to her sweet hand.  It
is so strong and delicate at the same time.  It reaches out to me and
I know I cannot resist following Karen to where she is taking me.