Stop All The Clocks, Cut Off The Telephone
I want to write about death, but during a time when people are dying all around us and every single one of us is vulnerable, what is there to say? Who am I to say anything of any meaning if you or someone you love dies from this virus? I feel inspired to write about everything else except the inevitable. The real thing.
Let me start from the beginning, why I want to say something anyways.
So I’m having a moment right now in the middle of the Coronavirus epidemic. I’m inspired to write. Let me tell you something about inspiration as a writer. In my experience, it is much like mania, it comes like a wave out of nowhere and lasts for a bit and overwhelms you. It is amazing, it makes you insane, and then it leaves and you are depressed.
I’m in the good part right now.
I feel like I want to write all the time and I feel like I have something to say. This is all great and everything except people are dying everywhere and the world feels like it’s ending. Besides dealing with an imminent apocalypse and the world turning into a huge morgue, inspiration is a real hoot.
Besides worrying that I will give the virus to my old and sick father by getting groceries and be the cause of his death, everything is fine. What am I supposed to do with this inspiration to create some good in the world? Or at least not make things worse.
While I wait. I wait for someone in my family, like my sister who is a nurse practitioner, to get Coronavirus. Or my dad, who is old and already sick with other health issues. I wait. I wait for someone to die. Whether it’s my father or your father or our friend, it’s only a matter of time.
And let’s face another reality, I could get it. Though it is unlikely, I could die.
Now there is something to write about. Something to talk about.
The thing that gets me through this part is the belief that Coronavirus does not control when I die, I think my higher self, my soul, the part connected to god, decides when I die. I think my soul has an agenda. I would like to talk to this soul sometime and find out what that crazy agenda is, but I do think there is a bigger plan.
I once went to my psychiatrist and cried because my father was in the hospital many years ago. “I’m afraid he’s going to die,” I said. “He is going to die...one day,” my psychiatrist said.
And that’s the truth, right? Whether it’s Coronavirus or heart disease, something is going to kill all of us and we have no idea when. Yes, it is scarier now that there is a new threat to our very lives.
But maybe this is all really about our fear of death. I don’t think we ever die. I think we change form. We go somewhere else. I think we either reincarnate into another being, or we re-join a higher power in complete love and bliss. But that’s just my theory. You may think death is it, the end. And I accept and respect that as your truth, either way we are making it all up anyways. Either way, death is the end of something that we love.
I do not want to die. I have plenty of things left to fuck up before I'm ready to go. And I definitely don’t want anyone I know to die. You know just a few weeks ago, my biggest problem was getting a decent parking spot at the college where I teach and secretly using my mother's handicap parking sticker and wondering if I was going to go to hell. Life sure has changed. My concept of hell has also changed.
I cried just now seeing a Facebook post about medical first responders, my sister is one of them. The funny thing is, I don’t think it’s a bad thing that I cried.
There was a time, a long period of time, where I could not cry. I was numb with depression and I think I was on so much medication that I literally could not cry anymore. It is actually refreshing to feel something.
People are dying, all over the world. But the truth is, they have always been dying, just different people, for different reasons. They will always die. We are all going to die.
I don’t know if I’m sad about that or the fact that I’m not sure I have lived. Will I die without really being alive? Will you? Sadly, some of us will die from this disease, but those of us that don’t, will we make the most of our lives in order to honor those who died?
When I get out of this house, what will I do differently? Maybe I’ll dance more. Maybe I’ll go listen to good music and really listen to my friends when they are talking and we are out to dinner. Maybe I will appreciate them because they are alive. Literally, as in not dead. And maybe I will look at things, like trees, like lemons. Just look at them like they are really there. Maybe I will really be here. Maybe I could do that now.
That’s all the whole mindfulness movement is anyways, being aware that you are alive, being aware of life itself. I don’t think life ends, but if you do, maybe you should be even more aware.
Life is beauty, poetry...these are the things I am after in my existence. I want to sing more and watch butterflies and sit by an open fire. I want to tell stories and listen to jokes and laugh. Oh, how I want to laugh.
And I will and I do. But now that this thing has happened, to me, to the world, I might appreciate the fact that I am alive a little more.
Because I will not be alive in this way, at this time, forever. And when I die, I want to be satisfied with the way I lived.
If, I mean when my father dies, I will read this poem to him:
'Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone'
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
W H Auden
nina
I have been featured in a new blog called, Corona Chronicles, check out here...