The Farthest Star in the Night Sky

for Ann Moore

My friend and I walk through the night. Winter is coming back. The night sky is clear, no clouds. The night will grow colder. We sip coffee. She knows the stars. I’ve been stuck on the Pleiades. That name. A constellation I knew as a boy. A picture on a page. A story. Seven divine sisters. The Pleiades, I say, to hear the sound and give it life. She points. There, she says. I count aloud one, two, three, four, five and six. The seventh is beyond our ability to see unaided. We walk under Orion. Taurus The Bull steaming at the snout. I ask, how far away is the seventh Pleiade. She says a number beyond my imagination. The night becomes colder. I was once told that each star is someone in heaven. A pinprick in God’s dome. She asks if I’m looking for my father. No, I say. He’s farther than the seventh Pleiade. The farthest star in the cold night’s sky. We hurry. The coffee is always getting cold.  
 

Grief At A Distance

Reading Rick Bass's lyrical memoir Why I Came West, I thought of a writer from back here in the east, David Budbill, most famous for his poems about the imagined town of Judevine. I've read Budbill since Ben recommended him, though when he first gave me Judevine I was too green to appreciate it. I came back to Budbill through Hayden Carruth and some experience and wisdom before I appreciated enough to hear what he wrote. Happy Life and While We've Still Got Feet are precious books to me now. In my classroom, I went to the computer and searched for a new Budbill book. There is one, but there's a catch: he died in October 2016. 

I get attached to writers. Learning that Budbill had died was a shock. Realizing he had been dead seventeen months without my knowing felt like I had been a bad friend. 

No, I didn't know the man. 

I had a similar feeling when J.D. Salinger died in 2010. It was a terrible time in my life and I stood in another classroom when I learned of his death the day he died. There wasn't any guilt over having missed it, and I understood I was never going to meet or correspond with the man, but I still felt as if a friend had died. 

Driving to get gas today, I passed a car like that of a neighbor whose husband died about the same time Budbill passed. Throughout her husband's cancer I kept tabs on her online and tried to be of some use. My wife had gone through cancer treatment too. She came through bald but on the mend. The neighbor's husband was taken off life support and passed into the other life. Since then, we haven't had much contact. It's as though she lives across the world instead of a block and a half away. 

Yesterday, I spoke with a woman who has been through chemo and radiation and who prays she is free, that cancer won't come back to her. She asked what exact kind of cancer my wife had had. I didn't know. I probably seemed clueless, out of the loop. In many ways, I was. I simply believed nothing bad could happen. I went to appointments, sat with her for chemo, and fainted while the plastic surgeon removed stitches from her mastectomy, but I didn't pay attention to names of things or exact details. If felt like ignoring some of that might make it go away. That's a fool's philosophy, but it worked for us this time. 

David Budbill has died. His last book of poetry is in paperback. I'll need to get a copy. I'll want to tell Ben because he gave Budbill to me and I eventually came to treasure that gift. Is it ridiculous that I'm grieving Budbill? I am, just as I grieved Salinger, and I hope it won't diminish the neighbor who died or his wife to say I felt similarly about that too. 

I'm whistling past the graveyard here. I often have. My wife is healthy, thank heavens. I'm healthy enough to grieve a poet I met only through words on printed pages. Then again, not much brings me closer to someone than their words on a page. About the only thing, holding my wife and not letting go. 

Three Years Pretty Much To The Day

Mom asked if I could believe it has been three years. We were at Wegmans, having breakfast on the third anniversary of Dad's death. She stared off past my left shoulder. It was clear she couldn't believe it had been that long or maybe that short, I wasn't sure which. I waited a moment before saying, in what I hoped was an apologetic tone, yeah, I can. It feels exactly like three years. I'm sure it wasn't the answer she wanted, but it's really the case for me. 

Dad was a funeral director and every so often we would about the job. He showed how he kept his banking, sent out bills, and ordered caskets. I liked this and liked having him show it to me. Sometimes I asked about the point of funerals and calling hours which seemed awful to the living and pointless for the dead. Dad explained that they help the living go into and maybe through some of the grieving. It's not about the dead. 

When Dad died, we went to the guy who bought his old funeral home and did the arrangements. We met the nun at Cathedral who set up the service. We put the obit Dad wrote for himself in the paper. (Writing your own obit is the kindest thing any of us can do for those we leave behind.) I remember every moment of calling hours. I remember the funeral beginning at the funeral home, proceeding to Cathedral, and ending at the cemetery in a February cold that still lingers. 

What doesn't linger is most of what I felt. I remember those feelings but don't feel them much any longer. On the anniversary of his death, on his birthday, at Christmas, or any old day of the week I have moved to a new place. 

I told Mom that when I think of him, I smile a little. I smiled just now., the left side of my mouth curled, my eyes squinted a little, and I felt warmth in my chest and behind my eyes. 

A friend says the dead are still here, available if we tap into the right line. She's no crackpot. I believe her, but I'm unable to access that line if it exists. Maybe someday, but for now my line is driving his pickup, looking at photographs, and memory. It's enough to help me feel that it has been three years pretty much to the day.

Grief was a place in which I lived, moving there shortly after my short stay in shock. I remained there wandering the streets lost and cold until I found a room for rent and got comfortable there long enough that the place became something else entirely. I still live in grief, but the sun shines there most of the time.  

I miss Dad. Sometimes I long for him to just come back already. He's not coming back. He's gone. I don't disbelieve his death and no longer so keenly feel his absence because I'm still here. I understand more of what he did in his life and what I might do with mine. 

Yes, it has been three years almost exactly since Dad died. A day before that, we spoke on the phone. At the end, I said, goodnight, Dad. And he said, goodnight, Bri. 

Three years is about a thousand days and nights and some nights I hear him tell me goodnight. I smile a little, feel a touch of warmth, and wonder how far away he is. I wish him goodnight, whispering, see you in the morning, Dad. Some mornings, more with every passing day, I do.