Little things mean everything.

Things don't mean anything until they mean something.  This explains why it is always the little things that add meaning to what are often the most ordinary of events in life. The nurse from the hospice who came to offiicially document the death of my dear wife placed a stethoscpope on her chest and listened for what seemed like forever.  I recall starting to say something to her, and  then stopping because I wanted her to be able to hear better.  One of Gwen's and my favorite songs was the Simon and Garfunkle classic, The Sounds of  Silence.  I thought of that as the nurse listened in vain.  She then said some words making the time of death official, and told me that the funeral home had been notified and their representatives would soon be here for the body.  I know, even as I write these words more than two months later, that people are dying right now.  But, on November 12, 2010, at 9:40 P. M., it was my perfect partner, my soulmate, who had died.  That means something!  To me, that means everything!  These words that I write won't bring her back to life, I hope they will keep her memory, and, more importantly, her meaning, alive.  Gwen lived a rich and full life, and it meant something.  I'm selfish to the extent that I don't want her to be soon forgotten.

In an hour or so, two men arrived to take Gwen's body to the mortuary at the funeral parlor.  They were polite, respectful and unbelieveably sympathetic.  I remember that about them, but what I remember most of all is that one  of them had beer on his breath.  Again, it's the little things that add meaning.  I couldn't bring myself to accompany them to the room where her body was.  I soon heard them carrying the stretcher  up the stairs. They let her lie in state in the hallway near the front door.  I kissed her good night, and,  prepared to spend my first night without her presence under my roof.  My youngest sister and her husband live nearby, and I had called to ask them to be with me.  Her husband had to return home, but she stayed with me that night. I am now becoming  comfortable with spending my nights alone;  It would have been a hard thing to spend that night alone.

I knew that whatever it had been that animated my wife's body, her spirit, her life force, or, as I believe to be the case, her soul, had now left it, and what remained was just that, her remains.  Yet, all I could think of as I watched the two men carry her off to the waiting hearse, was that she was going to be so alone.  This is a poem about that:

OFF TO SOMEWHERE

Early in  October,

on her 68^th birthday,

she was so happy

as her children carried her

in her wheelchair

out the door and down the porch steps.

 She was off to the movies.

Now, a month later,
two strange men,

one with beer on his breath

carry her lifeless body

on a hospital stretcher,

out the same door and down the same steps.

I can’t say where she was off to.

I know where she has gone.

 John A. Bayerl,  January 2, 2011

As I was preparing to write this a friend of mine called.  She knew Gwen very well.  I read the poem to her, and asked for her response.  She cried and  said, "It sucks."  I agree.  I don't think she meant that the poem sucks.