On the night Don Pomes died in the room downstairs, my mother standing by his side watching his last shallow breaths, my father having heard a different sound coming through the monitor while he sat upstairs at his desk and suggesting mom go look, the rest of us were having a party in the living room.
Nonna was turning 80 the next day, July 23rd, and the birthday cards, most of which were pop up cards of amazing skill and detail, were being assembled by the kids, and Kristine and Luna (I tried); the balloons were being blown up, the streamers and curlies Luna and Ava cut out hung on the walls to much loud talking and laughing and Guardians of the Galaxy music blaring through Victor’s Yoda bluetooth speaker. Every time Nonna walked up or down the stairs past us all (before his last breath), she would cover her eyes and yell, ‘not looking, not looking,’ while Ava yelled at her, ‘Go away, what are you doing? don’t look!’
In the middle of all the preparations Barbi noticed there were fewer of us around and I darted downstairs. Bruce, Victor, Nonna and Baba and Kristine were standing around Don’s bed.
‘He’s gone’, my mom said. I touched his rock hard chest and rubbed him and I smoothed his very handsome silver hair, because I liked how it felt. A non-living body is so very very different than a living one … so obvious … so startling every time. I’d seen and touched many parts of his body, skin to skin, over the days leading up to this; not as much as my mother or father but far more than Don or I would have expected a week before. There is so much skin to slide away, so little muscle to hold it all in place when someone older is dying. Turning a body that’s non-responsive is a particular skill; it’s rough and tender at once … but more rough. A functioning human, when winding down, has unwieldy weight; after transformation, the body is easier to manipulate, rigid.
Later my mother said something like: ‘I think it’s wonderful, you all going about with your preparations and Don down here; he would want that, celebration’.
Don was in the house again directly after death, later in the evening, allowing a celebration of his friend to proceed; he WAS present for me as I made my mother a birthday card, in my thinking of him as I sang along to Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum.
Moments after his last breath my sister got the children to come down and we all stood around and had a … breath? … looking at what once was Don Pomes. Bruce played the Fantastic’s song (the only good one, ‘Try to Remember’) from his phone; Don was a replacement for Mortimer in the Broadway production for years. It felt inadequate to me, our impromptu … blessing? circle-up? acknowledgment? But when I looked at my father sitting uneasily on the bed looking at his newly deceased friend, trying not to cry, my mother next to him, I was righted in my thinking and registered that my job was to be open to the huge moment rather than be discouraged for Don, once again, that he wasn’t surrounded by a priest, nun, nurse and others in St Francis Hospice, where he thought he would ultimately exit.
My parents had given him the best love and care he could have received for his death, had sat by his bed reading to him from Rudolph Steiner, reading from plays and poems, had touched him often and talked with him, assisted the nurses that came and the person that cleaned his body; and though his wish was to be at St Francis, it was to be there fully conscious and healthy enough to receive prayers that he could repeat back to the priests, benefitting from constant professional care; once he was non-responsive and a move to the hospice would have likely killed him, the Halekoa St house was probably an even better choice than the former. The conversations about these two scenarios were multiple, the reasoning coming from all of us, Barbi having clarity mixed with Nonna having her clarity; our good thoughts flipped the decision to stay or go (only the day before he died did the bed at St Francis finally open) back and forth; ultimately mom and dad decided in quiet.
Later that night, after my mother and father, exhausted, fell asleep on the bed and couch respectively in Don’s room, his mouth now closed with a towel by the first hospice nurse that came and noted his departure and called in the funeral services, the rest of us finished our cards and decorations, Victor and Kristine finished the cake, and then we all went to bed. Two hours later, the funeral home came and took Don’s body away, Victor waking to join my mother and father in saying goodbye and then going to sleep for the night.
In keeping with tradition, we celebrated Nonna’s birthday at the top of the day on July 23rd. Birthday breakfast with cake, cards then gifts.
Later that day, a posse of 8 chose a new dog, now named Lola, almost named Donna after Don, to take Enu’s place in the large family home at the top of the hill overlooking diamond head, Kahala, with views out to Ewa side and Kokohead both.
Death of an 88 year old.
Birthday for an 80 year old.
Always a reorganized 14 year old girl, inside all of us, in the house.
Entrance of a 3 month old puppy.
Birthdays follow deathdays follow the next normal day; the momentum of it all hardly stops to let a sacred moment own it’s full time. But we make space for it when we choose and blend it all together in a soup of opposing but complimentary experiences when we choose.
Exhausting, this life, even when not living in a high energy, house like the one at the top of Halekoa Dr., with revolving doors and more ‘doing’ than most other houses. So full of memories, this life, new ones and old ones, when living anywhere, ever.
Of course there are ghosts.
A poem by Charlotte from a few months ago sent via text:
When I was a child:
my sister and I, objects moved when we weren’t looking,
shimmering in the corners of our eyes.
My sister died when she was a little girl:
my sister and I were devastated
I prayed; pictures went up; she became part of our grandmother’s conversations. My sister and I grew closer.
After, I put up a picture of her. I started to talk to her. I told my sister that ghosts are real, that we had seen them.
There’s a picture I hung up:
my sister a little girl; a baby.
My sister‘s ghost, talking.
Watching The Rehearsal with Nathan Fielder
Yes... to all of that. Much love to you, Don and your family. And holy shit... Charlotte's poem
Beautiful.