Death is a Comma
When you lose someone you love, it frightens you. Not just for the loss of them. Your grief opens up the possibility that you will lose everyone you love.
But if everything is process, nothing is broken,
Rachel Naomi Remen
and maybe nothing needs to be fixed.
We humans give tiers to love. Those that are more important, and even most important. We’ve reserved most of the highest tiers for blood, as if we’re all stuck in some atavistic time where we can’t trust anyone in whom our common ancestry doesn’t flow. This retrograde scope of love sets friends at the bottom. That, my friends, is the definition of bullshit.
Do you believe me when I say
Lynn Ungar
you are neither salvaged nor saved
but salved, anointed by gentle hands
where you are most tender?
Grief is its own response, unpredictable and wild. It’s where your heart breaks open and reaches into the world with baby fingers curling in need. How dare I write that line? Because my friend taught me poetry deserves to live in the world tacked onto telephone poles where all going about their daily lives can read it, never having to stop, not even slow down, but consume it and carry it with forward them.
Now is the time to know
Hafiz
that all you do is sacred.
So maybe that’s the real fear of loss: it throws you into the reality of the world, rather than the made-up image we safely fold and tuck into our brains. The loss at death is real, the coming loss of others is real. Forgive me if I can’t approach that with dignity. My embrace of loss is not enlightened philosophy. It is a clawing at the fabric of the world, trying to rend into the place where my friend now exists.
Cleave a piece of wood, I am there; lift up the stone
The Gospel According to Thomas
and you will find me there.
Ultimately, death is a form of grammar, the most misunderstood form. Of course, I refer to the comma. That which indicates a pause, a signal to the reader to take a new breath. Death is not the period of finality we assign to it, nor the exclamation (point) it evokes from us. It is the intake before the leap into the next big thing. As with death, the comma is forever misplaced, misunderstood, mastered only by the masters. And my friend was the master of all commas. Every. Single. One.
I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic,
Kaylin Haught
and she said yes.
Rise in peace, Suzanne, you who gave me these lines of poetry in a rolled scroll that refuses to lie flat because, well, poetry. Even more, you gifted me with a (damaged) understanding of the sanctity of the comma, and thus life. My love flies with you.
Joe Hawes
I am sure all who knew Suzanne will appreciate your kind and deeply felt words. They give me comfort as I sit with the reality of her departure. It comes right after the death of another great. ady and good friend. Thus your words speak to my spirit and console in multiple ways
Ellen Morris Prewitt
I hate to hear that you’ve had a double whammy in the friend-losing department, Joe–what a blow. And I’m glad these words spoke of consolation for you. Maybe we can get together soon and remember Suzanne in all her glory.
Blake
This captures Suzanne’s spirit beautifully, with appropriately sly grammar references (though I think you should add double spaces between the sentences because she would want you to). I hope it finds its way to the telephone pole outside your house.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Ah, the double space. You are exactly right. Sure I could come up with a metaphor for that, if my brain would only engage. What a wonderful idea to print it and tack it onto a pole. And so it shall be done.
Sharon
This is her best eulogy, Ellen, and I thank you for letting it pour out of your flayed heart onto the page or screen or wherever it appears from now on. As Suzanne receives this tribute, and I have no doubt she will, I believe she will be smiling, and possibly hoisting a glass of icy-cold Coca-Cola in your direction. May she be granted eternal delight in Beauty.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
I was telling someone this morning about getting to be with Suzanne while you, a performance artist, delivered your living eulogy for her. She will be getting send off after send off, like a birthday week instead of just one measly day. Love to you. 💔
Donna
❤️
Joanne Corey
Thank you for sharing your friend, your loss, and your grief with us, Ellen. May your memories bring comfort, love, peace, and, eventually, new energy to you and all her friends and family.
I do disagree with this sentence, though.”Forgive me if I can’t approach that with dignity.” I believe that, because of our inherent human dignity, any expression of love, including the grief that springs from loss, is also imbued with dignity.
I keep re-reading the Lynn Ungar quote. It’s apparently what I need to hear today…
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Thank you for your blessing, Joanne, because that’s what your “May” sentence felt like to me, a blessing. And your belief in innate human dignity that is not affected by expression but just is.
These quotes were included in a gift from Suzanne. Not just these but more. And each one is a ringing note. I’m so glad one resonated with you.