Born to Something Else

I am the Monday handmaiden
for our green-eyed princess.
I enter her room quietly,
slowing myself to match her rhythm.
What does she need today?

Death is a messy and beautiful business.
The mystery of it is taking us along,
through heartbreak, through the logistics of her care,
through her particular royal crabbiness,
through calm talk of pine caskets and green burial,
through the luminous field of love in her room,
and back to heartbreak.

As her circle of women we are taking turns with her day by day,
as her body gets weaker – swollen in some places,
skinny in others,
and her spirit gets stronger – brave and soft.
She is more honest, having run out of time
to be polite.
She is picky about small things, having lost control
over most everything else.
She wants the cup here, not there.
She wants the light dimmed, but not that dim.
She wants this person to visit today, but not that one.
She is also loving and grateful for every bit of life she has.

We are all going to die.
I know this already,
but now I see it beyond fact.
We can want a certain quality of death
someday –
painless, peaceful, with loved ones –
but each death has a life all its own

and as I said, death is a messy and beautiful business.
Like childbirth,
beautiful but not pretty,
pure but not tidy

and we are watching our green-eyed princess
go through the stages of labor
toward another kind of birth.
Like any mother, she is moving through
her own birth canal, letting go of everything
and becoming everything.

She is being born to something else –
we can see it in her eyes.

with love to our Nancy and all of you,
Margaret Barkley
February 21, 2011