Women’s Work

I was describing my summer to a friend yesterday

The second summer in the span of three years

Wherein I returned home

(Home, the gentle mountains and steeped valleys of Vermont)

To escort a loved one into death

(My father this time, a man – in my esteem - who cast a sheltering shadow)

I chose the word specifically

-       Escort

A strange word, perhaps, in a death context

As the verb connotes courting

-       As in a coiffed young man leading his little Miss to the dance floor, her perfumed hand resting lightly on his arm

Or intimidation

-       As in a squadron of big, black Suburbans, warding the secure passage of their atomic bomb, their Yoda, their secret, coded message

I was neither in the act of courting nor intimidating, but I was certainly dancing

Dancing with my sisters in our summer dresses

(Pearls in our ears, small gems in the hollows of our necks)

Flitting in and around the deathbed like moths, like butterflies, like hummingbirds

Sometimes we brought books with us, or photo albums, or computer work

A cup of warming tea or a glass of cooling gin

We worked in tandem and we cried in tandem

And then we rested in tandem

-       Rolling up our sleeves, shaking out our hair, smoothing the pleats in our skirts

Finding nectar in his company as often as the gentle pauses would allow

And carrying it home into our heart baskets

Home into the belly of remembering

Home into the gut of affection, the wave of pain, the tendrils of loss

All of which weave together a complex braid of sweetest, purest Love

Pure because it is complicated and complicated is the only pearl I have ever known

Just yesterday, I read a beautiful line of verse about the stillness

between two waves of the sea

And it gave me long pause

Had we successfully travelled that suspension with our father?

Had we lovingly carried him between the first wave

(life)

and the second wave

(afterlife)?

 Had we been good, dependable escorts

So terribly busy with our women’s work, our sisters’ work

Loving him as he walked that tumultuous yet still bridge from wave to wave

Gasping backwards for his last breath as he reached forward, with welcoming arm,

Into that gentle place we cannot yet go?