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On Sunday, August 26, 2012, something happened.
Of late, I have lost all my mirth — speaking Hamlet-ish. If not that, then certainly I've taken on a grouchiness, a testiness, towards many elements of the routine life, including the very routineness of life itself. A shifting, as I thought of it, over the border into geezerhood.
I needed to shield myself from this grind, shield the ones I love from the grind as well, since they've done nothing to deserve this abrasion and dismissal. But I couldn't figure a way to do it, couldn't find the chink that would allow me to wedge in the lever-tip and pry off the whole crude stunted artifice and chuck it away.
So, I took myself on errands to the store, just to get the loved ones out of firing range, and the solution came to me unbidden, as these things are wont to do — during the washing of dishes, say, or the pulling of weeds.
What if that day — Sunday, August 26, 2012 — were to be my last? And I knew fully that this ending was coming. Knew that at midnight, all would be over — not in pain, not through self-violence or outer violence, but just finished. Lights off. Bells' reverberation stilled. How would I spend this day? (I gave myself one restriction: the day had to keep the character of any usual Sunday that Maria Beatriz and I would spend — it had to stay ordinary.)
Perhaps "unbidden" is not entirely true: the coming death of my sister's dog, Gabbie; my own thoughts about the mortal coil; the sometimes suffocation of ambition for my writing. But however the neurochemistry works in situations like this, it crafted a from-left-field suggestion that, because unforced by will or anxiety, made sense out of disparate parts.
So what happened?
Almost immediately — not a rush, really, more like a slow sifting, came a feeling of gentle-making humbleness. But it needed help to take hold, since it had to work through a thick veneer of bitchiness, and so I kept repeating to myself some variation of "Remember to remember — this all ends today, so pay attention in case you can take it with you." Over the day the humbleness worked its way through as the self-reminder took on (dare I say it?) the tenor of a prayer — not of supplication but of commemoration — memory-making — because even the smallest gesture turns precious when the experience of it may be the last of its kind.
And so patience returned. And the noisiness in the head dimmed out. And it was as if I could breathe again, see again, hear again, love again.
We biked, we made pizza, we cleaned the apartment, we checked our emails, we read in bed, we fell asleep. I remember looking at the digital clock as I turned off my reading light, seeing that it glowed "10:30" and thinking, "An hour and a half to go — and it has all been excellent." I knew, of course, that most likely I would be up the next morning, but I pretended anyway that that was not the case, that in 90 minutes I would no longer be there. And the thought that I had lived the day as best I could with the one I loved the most brought immense comfort to me — the humbleness had worked itself all the way through. Her breathing was the last thing I heard before dropping off to sleep.
People often talk about living each day as if it were their last, but it's not something that can be done by an act of will or reason. Something has to break (open) for it to work, something has to agree to let sadness and love work together to wash away regret and anger and turn fear (of loss, of pain) into focus. Above all, at some level, the coming end has to be believed, even if the odds are against it — the power of "what if" will make us feel the truth of "this is the end," the same energy that creates art or prayer or excellent food well presented, a rehearsal for what we know (we know!) is coming.
Monday was the same, but it was different. I am the same, but I am different as well. I lived a day as if it were my last. I am still breathless about it, still breathing about it.
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