Epitaph
By Merrit Malloy
When I die
Give what’s left of me away
To children
And old men that wait to die.
And if you need to cry,
Cry for your brother
Walking the street beside you.
And when you need me,
Put your arms
Around anyone
And give them
What you need to give to me.
I want to leave you something,
Something better
Than words
Or sounds.
Look for me
In the people I’ve known
Or loved,
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live on in your eyes
And not your mind.
You can love me most
By letting
Hands touch hands,
By letting bodies touch bodies,
And by letting go
Of children
That need to be free.
Love doesn’t die,
People do.
So, when all that’s left of me
Is love,
Give me away.
On this day in 2013, my husband, Ken, died. He always knew he would be the first to go. Far better that way, he used to say, because it meant he wouldn’t have to miss me, reminding me of something Seamus Heaney told Dennis O’Driscoll, in Stepping Stones, that he did not fear death the way he had done as a boy:
It’s more grief than fear, grief at having to leave ‘what thou lovest well’ and whom thou lovest well.
And, he loved me well. He was my most wise and best friend. A romantic with a rock and roll heart, I know he would love the story Laurie Anderson tells about the day she married Lou Reed:
It was spring in 2008 when I was walking down a road in California feeling sorry for myself and talking on my cell with Lou. “There are so many things I’ve never done that I wanted to do,” I said.
“Like what?”
“You know, I never learned German, I never studied physics, I never got married.”
“Why don’t we get married?” he asked. “I’ll meet you halfway. I’ll come to Colorado. How about tomorrow?”
“Um – don’t you think tomorrow is too soon?”
“No, I don’t.”
“And so the next day, we met in Boulder, Colorado, and got married in a friend’s backyard on a Saturday, wearing our old Saturday clothes, and when I had to do a show right after the ceremony, it was OK with Lou. Like many couples, we each constructed ways to be – strategies, and sometimes compromises, that would enable us to be part of a pair. Sometimes we lost a bit more than we were able to give, or gave up way too much, or felt abandoned. Sometimes we got really angry. But even when I was mad, I was never bored. We learned to forgive each other. And somehow, for 21 years, we tangled our minds and hearts together. ”
Photo: Annie Leibowitz
The day Ken married me was like any other. We were watching TV when I suggested it. “OK,” he said, and he put on his boots. Realizing he meant it, I dug out the Yellow Pages to search for a wedding chapel. I settled on one in an old west Phoenix neighborhood. The kindly preacher there reminded me of the blue-eyed old man in Field of Dreams, who regaled Kevin Costner’s, Ray Kinsella, with a story about all the blue hats Moonlight Graham never got around to giving his wife, Alicia.
In our everyday clothes and without wedding rings, we asked a stranger to officially witness the ceremony, during which we vowed to each other that we would stay together in sickness and health – till death us do part. It was easy to say, easy to mean it. Madly in love, we had no reason to suspect that cancer (mine) or aneurysms (his) would move in and turn things upside down more than once and make us resent our own bodies and our selves. Giddy and oblivious to any hint of dark days ahead, we filled up that ordinary November morning with a time-honored stream of extraordinary promises. We told no one. It was as if we had eloped to Gretna Green. We swallowed our secret and even went to work afterwards. Along with all the other rituals we performed every day, the act of getting married was as casual as it was important. Without fanfare or hoopla, it was ours. Completely ours. Private.
For a long time, we were answerable only to each other and did as we wished without having to worry much about other people. One hot Friday afternoon, when I was desperate to smell the sea, he told me to just get in the car. Off we went. No map. No GPS. No bottles of water. No phone. No specific destination other than “ocean.” That night, we were in Los Angeles inhaling the salty air. The next evening, we were in Pismo Beach, strolling along the pier. As if to put America’s vastness to the test, I asked him to keep driving. Eventually, we stopped by a lighthouse where we balanced the camera on the car, set the self-timer, and took a picture of ourselves, windswept and clinging to each other, completely unaware that a decade later, we would stand again on that very same spot on the road to Monterey, smiling for a picture that would be taken by our little girl.
We created hundreds of lovely little rituals and routines over the years. It was easy because, as my mother reminded me, I could set my watch by Ken. I always knew where he was, how much he loved me, how proud he was of things I did in my professional life and how much he hated the bullshit I brought into our home from that same profession. He was my biggest cheerleader, once telling the young me who used to get her feelings hurt easily and who cared too much about what other people thought, that she needed to grow some hard bark, because she would need it one day. Well, Ken, you were right. I know you didn’t want me to harden; you wanted me to be tough. Such toughness can be elusive in those moments when I must confront the blow of your death, in anticipation of your empty seat at our girl’s upcoming milestones – college graduation, perhaps a wedding – or to look up all these years later and expect you to walk in with another mug of coffee or a glass of wine for me, to inquire what I’m blogging about, to wonder aloud – with a wry and worried smile – if the woman I once was would be coming back any time soon.
We wrestled with the truth that the cancer changed me, as a brush with mortality would. It wasn’t bad or good. It just was.
It was not a perfect marriage, but it was an honest marriage. We argued about ridiculously minor things but rarely about the big stuff. One of our first arguments was over what it was he was thinking about. We never argued about that again. It went something like this:
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yup.”
“So what are you thinking about?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, it must be something . . . I can tell. Did I do something wrong? Is it about me? Can you at least tell me what it begins with? Just the first letter? Does it begin with a “Y”? It does, doesn’t it?”
“No baby. Just private thoughts. Private thoughts, my honey.”
Private thoughts.
Well. A wholly unsatisfactory response for someone who has to know the inner details, the finer points, the “how are you really feeling” liner notes. But he never told me. Growing up and old by his side, I suppose I figured out that we all have private thoughts, secrets never to be told, fears, wishes, things that stay deep within us – not bad, necessarily, just private thoughts. Most people just wouldn’t say that out loud. But Ken did.
He said it the same way he once told the cashier at a Pep Boys, after paying cash for new windshield wipers, that she couldn’t have his address. Not that he was a conspiracy theorist, he resented the notion of his name and address being placed on a list perhaps to be sold to someone who would profit from it. When he detected that she was annoyed because he was not cooperating the way a good customer should, Ken looked at her, deadpan, and with a twinkle in his eye, said quietly, “I just can’t do it. I can’t tell you where I live. The cops are after me.” And I had to walk out of the store because I was laughing so hard.
That’s how it was, except when it wasn’t, when he would insist that I had somehow lost my sense of humor. My retort would be that he had lost his ability to be funny. It would maybe turn into an argument about some other thing, a trifling thing, or nothing at all. Then it would pass, like every other storm in a teacup. And we would be certain again. Fearless.
Laurie Anderson would understand.
A private man in life, Ken also insisted that his death would be a private business. When the time came, he wanted to die alone, just to sleep on. There was to be no fuss, no funeral, no flurry of condolences, not even a goodbye if he could help it. Maybe he was afraid I wouldn’t know what to do or say. Maybe he thought it would be easier if he just disappeared into nothingness without ceremony. He would have been wrong.
Like a catechism, I absolutely know what to do and say. It is part of the culture that formed me, and I am bound to it. It’s sewn tidily in our DNA – where I’m from, we know to mark the time of death, to stop the clocks and cover the mirrors, to draw down blinds and close the curtains; we know what to say and do when led silently into a bedroom where the deceased has been “laid out”; we know how to pay our respects in private and in public, how to offer condolences over china cups of tea balanced on saucers bearing digestive biscuits; we know when to shake hands, when to whisper and weep and when to throw our heads back in laughter about a life lived in full. We know the craic.
Without such rituals in the days following Ken’s death, I raged internally and selfishly. Because he expected me to accept and respect his wishes – and because I had promised – I complied. I privatized my mourning. I wanted what I couldn’t have. I wanted a wake and a funeral and to be able to visit a grave, where I could bring flowers, perhaps freesias because he loved their scent. I wanted the bits and pieces of a public goodbye. I wanted to fill the air with his favorite music. He wanted none of it. No ceremony. No punctuation mark. Just an empty space.
In November 2013, a few days before he died in our Phoenix home, my daughter and I were far away in rural South Derry. We paid a visit to the graveyard in Bellaghy where poet, Seamus Heaney, is buried. And today, six years later, my recollection of that visit is fresh – the mound of Derry soil not yet settled under a sycamore tree, no marker other than a makeshift sign at the entrance to the car park, two plants, a bouquet, and a handwritten thank you note. The sycamore leaves scattered on the dirt and wet from the rain, the clouds hanging heavy and low – the perfect final resting place for a naturalist.
But Ken did not want to be buried in the ground. He wanted to be cremated. He wanted his ashes – all of them – strewn on a piece of ground in the desert, at the base of Black Mountain, where his childhood home had once stood. It represented his beginning. It was his first place. We obliged. My parents, far from their Castledawson home, my daughter, and a close friend did as he asked, each of us taking turns to empty the bag that contained the cremated remains of this man who had loved me. That bag probably weighed no more than five pounds. I recall fixating on this detail and wondering about Ken’s soul and the weight of it and its whereabouts. Where was it? Where was his soul?
With the right words at the right time – again – came Seamus Heaney and the epitaph from The Gravel Walks inscribed on the new headstone in place for the second anniversary of the poet’s death – “Walk on air against your better judgement.” The girl with her head in the clouds should never have doubted the man who kept her feet on the ground too.
Ken, you are neither here nor there. You are everywhere, and that is reason enough for “keeping going” in a way I hope makes you proud – believing in all that’s still attainable and possible and magical. Today I celebrate you and the time you gave me here. Thank you for all of it.
You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And find the heart unlatched and blow it open.
Photograph: Laurel Villa
