People You Die With

Call it morbid, but I am on a quest to find the people I’ll die with. Occupying one’s time with the constant companion of thriving infections induces such ponderings. I would imagine that a person gifted with health and the sweet drip of time like warm honey would engage sugarplum thoughts of seeking company to build with. But she is not me; she’s not at the mercy of this maelstrom circling a sick cycle carousel around and around me. Contrary to the beating life inside of me, the insatiable armies of invaders close in, day after day and many times they nearly succeed in snuffing the pulse that is me, out.

So, in the way that years of survival seem to have left me cocking my head in wonder at the saccharin ease healthy folk parade along with, I tend to approach related inquiries in the same way. Finding people to live with, to expand, savor what simmers within you with dependency would be simple.

But what about a life filled with death? Mine has cultured isolation and palpable estrangement from friends, family and myself. Like the dry retching I’ve spent years recoiling from, the ripples of recognition that those you live with and those you die with may not be the same crowd, reverberate.

To say that I crash from the precipitous ledge on which I hover every single day is not a dramatization. It is only natural, then, I think for me to want someone to hold my hand on the way down. Again and again.

So, lie down with me on this sunny day and be my somebody to die with. Be here with me as I am tossed like a rag-doll, jerked this way and that by the surf. Wade in until you’re eyes deep with me today, tomorrow, maybe for a a while, until the dying is done and the life will begin again.

“Remember Not to Forget,” painting by E.b. Fromkes.