untying

still in the room

Stella Blue lays in bed, perfectly still, breathing slowly, 5 breaths a minute. A white cloth covers her unseeing eyes. We keep the room dark yet, because she cared 10 days ago, when the light hurt her seeing eyes.

I sit next to her, on the bedside stool, the perch I’ll never leave, looking at my girl on her deathbed, the last place I knew her, the place I now see her most often in my minds eye.

I’m facing her square, 6 inches from her, holding her upper arm in my supinated hand because it fits perfectly. Her warmth, the smoothness of the skin, the fit.

There is only the sound of murmuring from the other room; the world outside is quiet…or I don’t hear it at least.

I stare at her round cheeks, still red so many months after radiation, her mouth calm, lips chapped. I reach out and feel her short hair.

Oh God, she feels so good.

She’s still here, but not for much longer, my little girl, Stella Blue.

I scoot closer; there is no getting close enough to her, so I scoot closer again.

She whispers something and her hands stir, and I lean back quickly, to give her room.

Something’s happening.

Her chin tilts up slightly. Her hands go up slowly; one gently brushes the bloody cloth covering her swollen eyes, the other touches her chapped lips, ever so gently, I can see it feels good to her, that kind of caress.

She’s not awake and she’s not asleep either…she’s somewhere in between.

Ativan, morphine…a lot of morphine, oxycodone, THC/CBD tincture, all of this is coursing through her body. And maybe bigger than all the drugs, that which works deepest on her state of mind, the knowledge of her upcoming death.

Sitting here I can only wonder of course, but I imagine she’s trying to decipher the lock of the next realm, trying to visit it. Maybe there isn’t a lock at all, maybe it’s a wide open prairie.

Then her hands rise up from her lips out in front of her, up and out.

They’re moving, like soft waving, Dancing almost, it’s so smooth its soothing to watch, so smooth…

What is she doing? What is this elegant task? Seeing this, seeing Stella Blue, lying on her deathbed, arms up doing this … I’m transported. Pulled light years away.

I lean in further. I cannot possibly get close enough, I want to hear every breath and whisper as I watch her unearthly gestures.

Her lips are moving but there’s no sound.

She is falling … this I’ve retroactively decided. She was falling! And her hands are caressing her past life as she moves into the next place. The falling is not down, it is up and through the dome of her old reality, up through the world we all know, ONLY know, until we’re where she is.

She’s climbing and falling at once, enabled by physics we cannot grok.

She’s falling away to her new home.

And I’m still sitting by that bed today. On the dark wooden stool, leaning on my knees, my own hands now on my lips, holding in the sounds I can’t find but press outward anyway.

I remember: I grabbed my mouth quickly and covered it completely, in both hands and squeezed hard, holding anything that could escape from getting out.

I think I did that to keep my life from flying out and following her. I was getting as close to my own death as I would ever get until the day it is my turn to leave.

Because, as she fell I realized there was nothing tethering us anymore, there was no safety rope to hold her back.

I couldn’t follow. I was sitting on a stool in her bedroom, healthy as could be.

I’m still sitting there, today; if there’s any one place I can say I always am, it’s on that stool.

I think maybe I did die that day, a bit. It has to be true. How can it not be? I felt it rise up and then I trapped it in with my hands … but I think some of me slipped out and left before I caught it.