As I Sat Sadly by Her Side
As I sat sadly by her side
At the window, through the glass
She stroked a kitten in her lap
And we watched the world as it fell past
Softly she spoke these words to me
And with brand new eyes, open wide
We pressed our faces to the glass
As I sat sadly by her side
Then she drew the curtains down
And said, "When will you ever learn
That what happens there beyond the glass
Is simply none of your concern?
God has given you but one heart
You are not a home for the hearts of your brothers
And God does not care for your benevolence
Anymore than he cares for the lack of it in others
Nor does he care for you to sit
At windows in judgment of the world He created
While sorrows pile up around you
Ugly, useless and over-inflated"
At which she turned her head away
Great tears leaping from her eyes
I could not wipe the smile from my face
As I sat sadly by her side
The room is cold, but that makes sense to me. There are several hundred pounds of not quite fresh meat on the premises that need to be preserved for a while. I am here making plans for the portion of it that used to be my sister, his daughter, your lover, their friend.
She looks bad lying there. All the blood and color has drained from her face and is pooled beneath her in bulging folds of skin, tracing an angry red road map across her back and nape, her jowels. The funeral director assures me she will look very good when he has finished with her. He tells me he is “an artist.”
Her eyes and mouth are closed, not as the result of peaceful slumber, but because of the methods of modern mortuary trickery. She is hard and chilly, the firmness and temperature of a block of cheddar you have just removed from the shelf in the dairy aisle. I speak softly to her, although she is not there.
This isn't really happening, you know. My family has always had a really sick sense of humor. Hey, Crow, you got punk'd, beeyawtch!
Three fitful hours of sleep I received last night have only made me more exhausted. I stayed up until the sun rose in order to complete the peripheral tasks that keep the living from losing it completely until the festivities ensue. Dan and I sat in a smoke-filled truck stop motel room, choosing track after track of the music she loved in life. We make a CD to be played before and after the service. A soundtrack at the party for a dead girl. It's a small thing. Our tiny ripple of control in a sea of chaos.
I stand in the church, retelling the story for the hundredth time to yet another curious friend or family member. I feel sick behind the cheerful manic smile that I wear like the black dress I chose for the occasion. The room stinks of death, stargazer lilies and a heavy synthetic plastic smell I assume is embalming fluid. Ray tells me later that the funeral home sounds sketchy. You shouldn't be able to smell it. They can always give her a Puerto Rican shower.
I can't stop thinking about that room. The room she lay in for 12, possibly more hours before he found her. The smell of cat urine and rotting food choking me as I stood there in the midst of boxes and soiled laundry that piled up, knee-high in the prison my sister spent the past several months lying in. There are flies and garbage everywhere. I am overwhelmed with nausea and sadness, blaming myself, my sister and then everyone else in turn for the horror that became my beautiful sister's life. No one can say they didn't know. In your heart of hearts you cannot deny you saw this coming if you spoke to her recently. She would begin normally, speaking for ten to fifteen minutes with absolute lucidity. Then the slurring would begin, and overtake the conversation until her voice on the other end grew fainter and fainter, eventually trailing off, my sister nodding off into a haze of pills and oblivion, asleep with the receiver in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other.
There were many such phone calls. And dinners. And conversations. But we all wanted to believe her when she told us she was no longer taking pain pills. She had flushed them all. All the doctors and emergency room visits had slowed down to but one doctor who now only gave her an anti-nauseate for her migraines. The slurring and blacking out and shaking hands were merely unfortunate side effects of this weak nausea medication. Everything is fine.
I hadn't seen my sister in over a year. She had been busy, too busy to come out to New York when I was pregnant and couldn't travel. Or she was broke and couldn't afford the plane fare. Or she couldn't leave there after I had the baby, because she had to drive my dad to chemotherapy each week. I don't know when my sister actually died. I suspect it was months before her body finally did.
At the window, through the glass
She stroked a kitten in her lap
And we watched the world as it fell past
Softly she spoke these words to me
And with brand new eyes, open wide
We pressed our faces to the glass
As I sat sadly by her side
Then she drew the curtains down
And said, "When will you ever learn
That what happens there beyond the glass
Is simply none of your concern?
God has given you but one heart
You are not a home for the hearts of your brothers
And God does not care for your benevolence
Anymore than he cares for the lack of it in others
Nor does he care for you to sit
At windows in judgment of the world He created
While sorrows pile up around you
Ugly, useless and over-inflated"
At which she turned her head away
Great tears leaping from her eyes
I could not wipe the smile from my face
As I sat sadly by her side
The room is cold, but that makes sense to me. There are several hundred pounds of not quite fresh meat on the premises that need to be preserved for a while. I am here making plans for the portion of it that used to be my sister, his daughter, your lover, their friend.
She looks bad lying there. All the blood and color has drained from her face and is pooled beneath her in bulging folds of skin, tracing an angry red road map across her back and nape, her jowels. The funeral director assures me she will look very good when he has finished with her. He tells me he is “an artist.”
Her eyes and mouth are closed, not as the result of peaceful slumber, but because of the methods of modern mortuary trickery. She is hard and chilly, the firmness and temperature of a block of cheddar you have just removed from the shelf in the dairy aisle. I speak softly to her, although she is not there.
This isn't really happening, you know. My family has always had a really sick sense of humor. Hey, Crow, you got punk'd, beeyawtch!
Three fitful hours of sleep I received last night have only made me more exhausted. I stayed up until the sun rose in order to complete the peripheral tasks that keep the living from losing it completely until the festivities ensue. Dan and I sat in a smoke-filled truck stop motel room, choosing track after track of the music she loved in life. We make a CD to be played before and after the service. A soundtrack at the party for a dead girl. It's a small thing. Our tiny ripple of control in a sea of chaos.
I stand in the church, retelling the story for the hundredth time to yet another curious friend or family member. I feel sick behind the cheerful manic smile that I wear like the black dress I chose for the occasion. The room stinks of death, stargazer lilies and a heavy synthetic plastic smell I assume is embalming fluid. Ray tells me later that the funeral home sounds sketchy. You shouldn't be able to smell it. They can always give her a Puerto Rican shower.
I can't stop thinking about that room. The room she lay in for 12, possibly more hours before he found her. The smell of cat urine and rotting food choking me as I stood there in the midst of boxes and soiled laundry that piled up, knee-high in the prison my sister spent the past several months lying in. There are flies and garbage everywhere. I am overwhelmed with nausea and sadness, blaming myself, my sister and then everyone else in turn for the horror that became my beautiful sister's life. No one can say they didn't know. In your heart of hearts you cannot deny you saw this coming if you spoke to her recently. She would begin normally, speaking for ten to fifteen minutes with absolute lucidity. Then the slurring would begin, and overtake the conversation until her voice on the other end grew fainter and fainter, eventually trailing off, my sister nodding off into a haze of pills and oblivion, asleep with the receiver in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other.
There were many such phone calls. And dinners. And conversations. But we all wanted to believe her when she told us she was no longer taking pain pills. She had flushed them all. All the doctors and emergency room visits had slowed down to but one doctor who now only gave her an anti-nauseate for her migraines. The slurring and blacking out and shaking hands were merely unfortunate side effects of this weak nausea medication. Everything is fine.
I hadn't seen my sister in over a year. She had been busy, too busy to come out to New York when I was pregnant and couldn't travel. Or she was broke and couldn't afford the plane fare. Or she couldn't leave there after I had the baby, because she had to drive my dad to chemotherapy each week. I don't know when my sister actually died. I suspect it was months before her body finally did.