Black and Sun

Sweet dreams Jim.

I hope there are mountains to hike in heaven. And that the Old Man of the Mountain will greet you there.

There’s a dead bird in our kitchen vent. It wasn’t always dead. In fact a couple weeks ago it was making quite a ruckus. I woke up one morning to find Marley perched on the stove looking earnestly at an incessant scratching sound coming from the vent. More excitement than she’s had in weeks. When we got home later the noises had stopped, but we turned on the fan and feathers flew out. The scratching didn’t come back and we assumed the critter had found its way out. That was a few weeks ago.

Apparently not. This morning I found maggots on the stove.

The thing is, the maggots are gross, yes, but the bird is making me incredibly sad. There’s a slight odor coming from the vent, but oddly it’s not the smell of death and decay. It’s a warm, yeasty animal smell. The smell of life and birth. I think it must be the smell of the nest.

Wherever I go, I smell that nest. We cleaned out the vent, but the bird is haunting me. Because this week, Dennis’ friend Jim is dying.

Such a strange concept, dying. I don’t think I really understand it. Died, dead, I get that. Sick, has cancer, I understand. I don’t understand dying.

This is my limited experience with human death:

René, the kid from my homeroom, who was hit by a drunk driver while riding his bike and drowned in a ditch. Mike Bass called me while I was at my college orientation and told me:“Hey, remember that kid you used to study trig with? He died yesterday.” 

Marco, my swim team boyfriend, who was killed in a car accident – flew out the sunroof and broke his neck. We only “went out” for a few months. The most beautiful boy I ever knew, body like a Greek god, the perfect boyfriend, perfect friend, perfect son, perfect brother, never should have been him… Clem called me in Vermont and told me. It was after graduation, the following Fall I think. I was living on Crombie Street with Jay and Karenina, our crazy supermodel husky-shepherd freakshow of a dog. I think it was October. For months after he told me I couldn’t get the image of Marco’s hands out of my mind – a tiny nearly invisible scar near his thumb.

My Grammy. While I was in New Zealand. Found out in a matter-of-fact email from my mother that I received at work. “Grammy died peacefully in her sleep. Don’t worry about flying home for the funeral.” I had only been at my job for a week and remember looking around for someone to share my shock and grief with. There was no one. I burst into tears awkwardly and went home.

My Grampa. A year and a half later, still in New Zealand. This time my father warned me. And so I went out and bought a pretty card, even though my grampa couldn’t see, and described the image on the front for him, along with some kind words and fond memories, knowing someone would be kind enough to read it to him, my little goodbye from the other side of the world. And the day before he died the nurse reported that he had been sitting in his chair smiling, and when asked why, he said: “I’ll be seeing Ginny soon.”

My Poppy Sid. Not long after our last visit in September. A merciful parting. “I’m falling apart,” he said to me mournfully. And he was – he’d aged so much since the last time I’d seen him – his teeth too large for his bony face, his skin papery, his hair like floss, like gray frizzy corn husk, his voice not working properly, his dignity in shambles. That last visit I watched my Poppy looking helplessly out at me through this old man’s face as if to say, how does life come to this? So when we heard he’d died, we knew he’d gone with relief.

My Nana… is still here. Sort of. So far-gone she hardly knows her name, but still full of fire as ever, yelling “Piss Off!” at the nurse who tries to help her after she falls out of bed.

But these – these deaths are either sudden and shocking or long expected. None of them were dying. They were alive and then they were dead. There was no mortal verb used in the present continuous tense.

But Jim will probably die this week. Bethany says. And tomorrow I will go with Dennis to visit him one last time. If he makes it through the night. Dennis says. We make plans for the weekend aware that they might have to be re-arranged, should there be a funeral. But he’s still here. When he’s lucid, he’s still here.

I’m not sure what to expect when I see Jim. If I see Jim. I didn’t know him well – a couple barbeques and dinner parties. A handful of hikes. When I try to conjure his face I can only see him grinning. This fifty-something-year-old guy with bad knees and a lung and a half, trekking up the mountain keeping pace with the best of us. Laughing at Den’s goofy jokes. Having a grand old time.

So what is this dying?

All day I’ve had the smell of the nest in my nose. Not unpleasant, but haunting. The smell of life intermingled with the knowledge of death. The smell of birth mixed with the knowledge of a little life that sat dying in our kitchen vent as we cooked dinner and joked and laughed and played with the cats and lived.

When I was seventeen I wrote my college application essay on “the meaning of the Oscar Wilde quote ‘wisdom comes with winter’” combined with William Wordsworth’s “the child is the father of the man” – because I couldn’t do anything simply, and the Wilde quote seemed too obvious. As the man lies dying in the cold, sterile white January, a baby is born.

And so life imitates art. Sitting in 1369 Sunday, my phone rings as Dennis is telling Kelly about Jim. It’s my old childhood best friend Sonja. Friday morning, Vivienne was born.