It was goodgoodgood to see everyone.
Now I'm anticipating ten days in Mexico, where one sun-soaked, sleepy, day will lead to the next.
Not so long ago I believed I'd never travel outside of the US again. I figured I wouldn't want to be that far from my health care providers, or even be in a plane that long. I just didn't feel good enough. And I didn't mind (so much) being bald on the California coast, but I didn't think it'd be so hot in other parts of the world.
Even when my hair grew back and I started feeling better, I still had the unhealing wound-of-mystery, and it seemed unlikely that I could spend days and days and days in the ocean.
So all of this is gravy. I know to appreciate a bonus when I receive one, because I've felt that my life with Eric has been like winning a cosmic lottery. Even if I'd been lucky (lucky lucky) enough to grow old and cantankerous with Eric -- even if my years with him had far outnumbered my years without him -- I still would have considered that time a prize.
Writer Ray Carver was a worst-case-scenario alcoholic for much of his life. He was the sort of drunk who would drink tall glasses of nyquil when trying to stay off the hooch. But his hard-won sobriety cooincided with meeting the love-of-his-live (writer Tess Gallagher), and each day of his life post-alchohol felt like gravy to him.
He died of lung cancer after ten years of sobriety. I recently read his last poem, and I wanted to share it here, even though I KNOW people don't like poetry. Here it is.
Late Fragment
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment