DEATH AND TAXES

by | Mar 12, 2017 | The Writer's Life | 15 comments

By Francine Mathews

April is the cruelest month, T.S. Eliot assures us, but March can be pretty lousy, too. I feel April’s pain on the fifteenth each year, but I spend laborious hours all March assembling the information for my tax accountant to deliver his terrible news. I realize this falls into the category of First World Problems–and that if I only kept up with my Quicken entries all year long it’d be a snap to do–but hey, I have a lot on my hands. Books to read, books to write, clothes to wash and children to send off to college. And then there’s the loss of people I love. That seems to happen with brutal frequency in the month of March. My mother, for example, died on the fifteenth–the Ides of March–and so did my uncle, several years before her. It is a date rife with foreboding for me as well as Caesar. 

Hence today’s Meditation, which purports to be about Death and Taxes. I confess right now that the title is a bait and switch–I intend to talk solely about Death.

I lost a good friend a few weeks ago. I will call her simply My Friend, out of respect for her privacy and that of her family. Hers was a death foretold–whose, really is not?–but it crept up on all of us who loved her. A bout of indigestion at a July 4th barbecue, diagnosed twelve hours later as Stage 3 pancreatic cancer. She lived eight months after Independence Day and spent most of it exploring what she called “a better dying.” As she had taught all of us for years how to live a better life, I wanted to learn from her in this as in everything. But the apprenticeship came to end early one Saturday morning. Yesterday, hundreds of us gathered in an intimate and lovely old Episcopalian church to weep as a soprano sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

Bear with me. I need to tell you about My Friend. It will help me come to terms, a little, with her absence, and perhaps a little with my own life. It may even help you to come to terms with yours.

When I first walked into her house years ago I was startled by the existence of a woman drunk on words. I had heard from a mutual acquaintance that My Friend was an aspiring writer; it was the proximate reason for us to meet. But the truth is, aspiration had nothing to do with it. My Friend lived in a sea of words, ran her fingers through them like a bowl full of jelly beans, caught them on her tongue like fresh snowflakes. She painted quotations from Ecclesiastes on the risers of her stairs. Her comfortable porch cushions were covered with hand-lettered phrases (my favorite: “Bunter, Launch the Lagonda!” from a TV production of Peter Wimsey.) And her remarkable walled garden was lined with massive zinc panels, hand-painted with stanzas from Andrew Marvell’s 17th-century poem, “The Garden.” I called these the Stations of Eden because the poetry led you through the various beds and garden rooms My Friend had formed with her own hands. The entire back terrace of raised beds and iron sculptures was paved in herringbone brick–and I say herringbone, because it requires involvement and thought. My Friend loved the pattern. But to achieve it, each brick had to be hand-cut at a correct mitered angle. So My Friend bought a brick saw. She measured and cut every brick before laying each of them in the earth. A quarter-acre of art, rugs and patterns and paths of brick, woven among the flowers and the Andrew Marvell:

Here at the fountain’s sliding foot, 
Or at some fruit tree’s mossy root, 
Casting the body’s vest aside, 
My soul into the boughs does glide; 
There like a bird it sits and sings, 
Then whets, and combs its silver wings; 
And, till prepar’d for longer flight, 
Waves in its plumes the various light. 

She wrote poetry her whole life long as a way of processing the oddities and emotions and gifts of life; she embraced everyone she met; and never did I hear her say a negative thing about another human being. Her novel, unpublished, is a work of art.

And now my bitter confession: I wasted the time I had with her. Being a busy person, as she was herself, I found many reasons to put off our meetings. I would think in my mind: I must see My Friend again soon. I must walk the dog with her. Drop her a note. Push open her picket fence gate and walk up her stone steps to sit on her vine-covered porch and talk a while. 

never did it enough, and now I can never do it enough again.

In the months following her diagnosis, we struggled against the inevitable and our own inability to change the outcome. We traded spurious good news and clutched at straws. When you feel powerless, you look around for something to do. Another friend organized a cooking schedule. We all signed up. In the months remaining to My Friend’s life, I needed this more than anything–the dates on the calendar that said I could spend the day in my kitchen, making soup. Making dinner for My Friend’s family. Of course she was a marvelous cook herself and a great gatherer of love around her table, and so dropping containers of steaming pasta and polenta and curry and beef ragu on that front porch was all each of us who loved her could do to feel better about ourselves.  Less lonely. Less out of time.

Ten days before she died, My Friend sent us all Valentines that she and her husband had hand-drawn and written to each other, with phrases of her most beloved poet, Walt Whitman.

Then with the knowledge of death as walking on one side of me, And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me, And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions, I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not. 

When she was truly gone, those of us she left behind appeared out of the woodwork to help her daughter, who is in large measure My Friend still walking on this Earth, to  move tables in from the brick terrace that was waking in Spring, from the porch where she will never sit again, now, propped up by those cushions with words. We scrubbed the tables and moved chairs and swept floors and threw open french doors to sunlight and March wind. We held her dog close when he whined. We arranged flowers. It was necessary to me in particular to buy a lot of flowers (see picture at the head of this post, from my kitchen a few days ago), and leave them in bowls scattered around the house. So that when everyone assembled to love all that remains of My Friend, the Garden was there, too.

have tried to absorb the lessons of A Better Dying these past few days as I have walked on from My Friend’s picket gate and the people she has left at the foot of Marvell’s tree. In order to have A Better Dying, I need to live a Better Life. Be curious and embracing of everyone I meet. Take time to measure and cut, as things ought to be measured and cut. Be drunk on words. Serve love every night and morning at my table, even if I’m the only one eating there.

leave you with one of My Friend’s final poems.

Packing

I’m certainly not taking any of this torso claptrap. No need for any
organ reticules, kiss purse cavities, old coils of strap,
stones that have stuck in where they were thrown.
I will fit effortlessly into the overhead, my contents shifting as I sluff
off most of my skin in the lapsarian swoon that is prologue to practically every-
thing.
I will take the precious orbs of my eyes in case they can conjure any
of what glory they have beheld, but if mortal passions
are under suspicion by the authorities, I will relinquish them
to my beloveds–those days when we beheld each other on the turning world.

Francine
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15 Comments

  1. S. Lee Manning

    FRancine, a lovely memory of your friend. This last month, I also lost a friend ten years younger than me to breast cancer and an aunt, 35 years older. Both hit hard. May your Friend's memory be a blessing, and may all who loved her find peace.

  2. Karna Bodman

    Oh, Francine, what a most thoughtful and lovely tribute to your friend. You showed how she was a great writer and you mentioned that her novel is unpublished. I wonder if her family would want it submitted for possible publication? Wouldn't that also be a wonderful tribute if it worked out? Finally your great piece reminded me of something my father used to say, "Treat your friends as if you will die tomorrow….treat your finances as if you will live forever." Thanks for a great post!

  3. Francine Mathews

    I agree, Karna, it would be wonderful if her book were published. We'll see what happens.

    Sandy, so sorry to hear you're grieving. Take care.

  4. Chris Goff

    This post made me cry, and it made me smile. Like the perfect movie, this is the perfect tribute to a friend you clearly loved. I'm so sorry you lost your friend, and so happy that you paid her tribute here. Thank you, and hugs.

  5. JELUE

    Francine– Your post and Your Friend's poem remind me of a piece by Thomas Merton…

    "At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere."

    Take care.

  6. Gayle Lynds

    August is my month of deaths, when the heat and thunderstorms seem to beat me down, but the sun always shines again. What an incredible essay, Francine, so rich with love and longing and loss. I've recently been reliving my sister's death some 50 years ago, and your essay has helped me. Bless you.

  7. Debi Huff

    Francine-I am so sorry for the loss of your friend. I have just returned to Kentucky from California for the second time in 3 weeks. I went on a Run-away week-end with my friend and other women–we have been doing this for over 45 years. Then her California friends threw a Celebration of Life party for her. I am so glad I went for that, too. She and I have been friends for 45 years and our lives are so intertwined with each other as well as with our other Run-away women. She has Stage 4 ovarian cancer and is not expected to live many more months. We will still do our Run-aways in her memory since she was the one who started them all. What a wonderful tribute to your friend from you. These friends will live on in our memories and we will all be better for having known each other. Hugs, Debi

  8. kk

    Never have I read a blog post until now when a huge lump in my throat resulted. There are lessons for us all in your words. We must not be too timid or busy to pay heed.
    I am sorry for your great loss but thank you for sharing your devotion and sorrow.

  9. Michele Mulholland France

    I have shamelessly posted both your fleurs picture and your essay as my Facebook profile.
    Shameless because I want to read more of her words, and I did not ask for your permission.
    Thank you for this.

  10. john sheldon

    Oh, to be remembered like that.

  11. Francine Mathews

    Thank you for all the kind words on My Friend's behalf. I wish I could respond to each individual comment, but this blog program doesn't allow that except on mobile phone apps–and it's too tedious to type on a phone!

    I appreciate the inspiration of the Merton. The gate of heaven is everywhere, particularly in words and gardens.

    Debi, hold your friend close. Gayle, hold your sister's memory.

    Happy spring. It does spring eternal.

  12. Helaine Mario

    thank you for these words, i feel as if we all can drown in them and honor the memory of your friend. yes march is hard – my mother died on march 11, almost 40 years ago. i wish i had known these three words then – a better dying – because they are not only for the person we lose but for those of us who remain behind, at the roots of the tree. i am taking away these words, and the images of the garden, and although i am in tears they are 'water the garden' tears. words change us, don't they? and so do our friends. xoxoxoxo helaine

  13. Sonja Stone

    Francine, for you, a woman so eloquent and easy with verse, to admire your friend's life of words… she must have been extraordinary. I'm sorry for your loss, and I'm sending you love.

  14. Francine Mathews

    I feel compelled to clarify for all the readers of this post: This is not MY loss. This is a loss to the world of one particularly compelling person. MY loss was in not spending enough time with her while she was well. That's the lesson I've been struggling with–and hoped to convey: That even though I know we all die, I persist in acting as though my time with those I care about is infinite. It's not.

    So go forth and spend an hour with someone you value today! Live this moment.

  15. Jamie Freveletti

    Such a beautiful post and memory. She sounds wonderful and my condolences to you and to her family