“I believe that our friends among the dead really do mind us and look out for us. Often there might be a big boulder of misery over your path about to fall on you, but your friends among the dead hold it back until you have passed by.” – John O’Donohue
I have been in a death planning workshop all weekend. I’m fine, don’t worry, I’m not dying. I mean, I don’t have a diagnosis, but we are all dying. That’s life. Two death doulas are walking us through a lot of heavy stuff. Even for me, and I’m used to death. It’s my beat thanks to writing about 500 obituaries and decades of hospice work, a lot of reading, near misses– and I’m 66. I know a lot of dead people very well. Death and grief are joined at my hip.
The facilitator, a death doula, gives us writing prompts. Near the end of the second day, I was tired and vulnerable. He asked us to take fifteen minutes to answer the question: What would I like to say to the person I lost?
The person?
There’s a crowd.
So much to say, where to begin? It’s a novel. A huge, sweeping, multigenerational historical saga.
I wrote a short poem instead and spent the rest of the time looking out the window. It’s a rough first draft and maybe I shouldn’t share it yet, or ever, but here you go:
What do you Wish you Could say to the People you’ve Lost?
Where are you?
Can you hear me?
What does it feel like, dying, I mean?
Why don’t you write?
Call?
Text?
You promised you’d give me a sign.
Why haven’t you flickered one lamp?
Touched down as a chickadee on my arm?
Shown up for the Skittles you said to leave on the bridge?
Mom, do you walk across the fields at dusk?
I haven’t been back to the farm since Dad died.
I know it’s not your style,
but would you please scare the wits out of me on Halloween?
