I had a daughter once. She died a suicide at 34. She rotted for a week before someone inquired about her. When my wife and I entered her quarters, riven with books, everything had the smell of decomposition to it. Alcohol, soap, fresh air, Febreze, nothing could erase that nauseating odor. It took me years to realize that her very flesh was embedded into everything she left. Horrible as the odor was, it was, in a way, her last effulgent gift to the world. She was embedded, would not leave. Did she ever live? Yes. I can say that — at times I wonder. For her memory is kept woozily intact by me. I give her life — but she is dead, I know. When I die, she dies again. When I come to die, all memories die. Many people die when each of us dies. In effect, cemeteries have no real purpose. They exist for the literal among us.
Caryn, I call out. No answer. I contain her within. I could speak, “Yes, father.”
“How are you, sweetheart?”
“I’m all right. I am restful now.”
“I loved you very much.”
I cannot write her response, for I can’t go any further. Like fire, I don’t know. A child’s death, a daughter’s death, is an emotional guillotine severing heart and mind. I struggle with it every day, knowing bitterly that when she was alive I didn’t know me too well and I didn’t know her and she didn’t know herself — or me, either. Whatever illlusions we mutually shared, the barest, merest thing I have is her loss — that is more real to me than death. In fact, I have “died” several times in my lifetime, so whatever happens at the end might be considered a respite.
I strive too hard; there is a striven quality to my life. I am stressed as a consequence; like any old person, change rattles me. This temporary — fragile — order we are given in our lives, the sense of who we are, our heritage, our upbringing, our relationships, our loving kin is the only order we have. It is our fog within the greater fog; at least it is our precipitate, ephemeral as it is. As creatures apparently we need a kind of stasis within all this flux.
I simply cannot get a handle on all this. What is it we do on a daily basis as individuals other than needs, bodily functions, working, and all the rest? What are we about? I imagine I waste my time asking these questions which may very well be another kind of deadening condition. In short, I am peeved. I don’t like the idea that I may only be lint in someone’s larger pocket. And I am not interested in “empowerment.” I am just curious. And I am not political, wearisome as all that is.
What is fire?
I don’t get it. I just don’t understand it.
Once ignited, metaphorically we are all fire. What sustains us? What is the essence of fire? I don’t know. Just curious.
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