Dying To Live

Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life? ~Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver once said when death comes, takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy her and snaps shut his purse, she wants to step through that door filled with curiosity and I hope she did.

Death came for me one day, flat line screaming, but saved his bright coins. Snapped shut his purse and left me twitching, naked and weeping but alive, on a cold metal table as the paddles gave me back life and other gifts.

They say you see white light, but it wasn’t white so much as bright, like an overexposed photo on a brilliantly sunny day. And devoid of eyes, hands or body, I drank light with my soul, before the door slammed shut again.

I woke weeping for the light to see the doctor, face wet with tears. Hear his voice, ragged, say oh thank god, thank god and it slowly dawned on me that he did not lose a patient that day. The loss was mine. I lost myself. Lost who I used to be.

There is a before me and an after me. They look the same, laugh the same. Walk the same and talk the same. But they are not the same. And I? Am slowly becoming death to all that was never really a life in the first place.

Propriety and people pleasing, dead. Expectations and miseries, dead. Fights over stupid petty grievances, dead. This weary job, the relationship that should never have been, dead. And I gladly pay the coins for those deaths. Dead, dead, and done.

---

Standing in the mirror, I stare into eyes that saw the universe in a glory of light. I don’t know who I am. I’m not who I was. Nor who I will be. I am made of becoming.

I am thoughts and hopes and uncertain tomorrows shaped by the ghosts of every dreamer that ever breathed before me and then slipped away into that light.

The ghost of Robert Frost, taking the road less travelled. Sun glistening on water on a sunny summer day, tiny grains of sand glittering on bare feet. Lilac blossoms floating on a breeze. Birds chirping in the forest perched on crooked limb trees.

Like the ghost of Joyce Kilmer, I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree.

I tiptoe behind the ghost of Bukowski, through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead—dreaming of a bluebird. Singing just softly. Inside. Hope is the thing with feathers whispers the ghost of Emily Dickinson and I hope.

I am the ghost of Kerouac, mad to live, mad to talk, desiring everything all at once, exploding like spiders across the stars. I wake up and eat cake for breakfast. Milk, flour, butter — it’s just like pancakes, I say. And laugh.

Like the ghost of Virginia Woolf, my brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness and the ghost of Mary Oliver whispers, tells me the soft flesh of my animal must love what it loves. Love doesn’t fill, it radiates. How did I never know that before?

Through eyes of ghosts, I see beauty so poignant it makes me weep with gratitude to be alive, to have been spared the coins and granted a little more time.

I lick honeycomb held in sticky fingers, run in the rain, pick wild berries from bushes, fingers stained red. Dance in the sand, toenails pink. Talk to the poplar trees and weep in wonder when they answer and they do. Listen. Can you hear them?

Spread a blanket on the lawn, drink coffee under the stars at midnight, flowers glowing white in the dark. Look. A shooting star. Close my eyes. Make a wish.

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A blue-jay landed on my chair one summer morning, so close I could have touched him but daring not frighten him, I held my breath instead. So still, barely breathing, it occurs to me that this — this is how joy arrives. Unexpected, it arrives in silence.

Hello little bird, I whisper and he tips his head to the side. Looks at me through glittering eyes, tiny gems and I remain still. So still. Barely breathing.

You can’t make it happen. Joy. Can’t demand or even wish it into being.

But if you look from your heart instead of merely your eyes, you might see it when it arrives. If you’re lucky. And it does, it always does. I know because the ghost of Einstein says the universe is either magic — or it is nothing at all.

It is not nothing.

I see magic everywhere. In eyes, and hands that make something out of nothing. In water bubbling and tumbling over river rocks and wind rustling the branches of a tree outside my window. In words that make hearts beat as one.

This is what life is, I think. Hearts that see.

I do not miss that life I lived. Those fighting days or the shriveled and too small skin I left behind in the dry desert of my yesterdays. I do not miss a life made of you should do this, you should do that, because I said so that’s why.

The world can keep its advice, save for this.

You are what you eat.

Sometimes, I eat flowers. Nasturtiums are lovely. Peppery, they bite back. One summer I made dandelion jelly. Fingers stained yellow, pouring sweet sunshine into tiny jars to give to random people who could use a little sunshine. Crazy woman, half drunk on life, eating rose petals and pansies, lips stained with sweet berries and pollen.

But mostly, we eat words. It’s the primary diet of the human animal.

We call it communication but it’s mostly a twenty four hour all-you-can-eat buffet of advice, opinion and judgement. You need to do this, you have to do that, and if you want my opinion... No, I really don’t. Thank you, but no thank you.

I don’t eat those words anymore.

I would go to bed hungry first.

Covering my ears, I listen with eyes instead and see with my heart. The world calls and I chase atoms through rivers and forests, branches tugging my hair and the universe drops words like shining stars into hungry arms and I carry them with tender care.

Thirsty, I drink. I am insatiable. How do I get enough when I’m finite? Like Oliver Twist I look up at the butter moon, and ask her softly. Please, may I have some more?

Of all the most astounding curiosities, here is perhaps the biggest curiosity of all. The more I learn, the less I seem to know. There’s only one thing I know for sure now, and it’s that time can make me no promises. But still, I hope.

He will come again, the ferryman.

And when he pays all his bright coins and snaps shut his purse, I will not go willingly. But I will go knowing I have tasted what it means to feel alive.

Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?
— Mary Oliver