SNC

Bury Them in the Dust Together

I have been thinking about you again. But then, of course, I was always going to. It has been three years, three years, three years since I told you you would haunt me 'til the end of my life if you died, "whether that's long or short." And I have had almost just as long as that to prove it. Life is looking longer now; back then I thought it would be very short. But my statement stands, it stands, it will always stand. Because I love you.

you are dead. there is nothing in the world that i can do for you
if you were alive, you would be a persistent part of my life
if you were alive i would have continued to work with you and tried to make you better
i had obligations to you
those obligations to you disappeared after your death
because now you are in sheol
except...
that it is the dead who most need friends
being unable to make new ones
i have to think about this

One year ago, I said I would have to think about what it is I owe you. About what it is I can do for you. About what it is I can be for you. I felt, back then, that I was moving on. But "Lemuria does not pass as time passes," and Lemuria is grief as much as love. Sometimes it really feels as though I have moved on. And sometimes I gnash my teeth and weep and cry out with a bleeding voice, "Kyrie eleison! Kyrie eleison! Kyrie eleison!" Waves on a shore, lapping; tides, high and low. But moving on implies that there is somewhere to go, and I do not think there is anywhere to go at all. We misquote Scripture at each other, the Scripture you inspired me to read after your death. I say, "For where can I go from your presence, / and where from before you flee?" You say, "If I soar to the Heavens, you are there; / if I bed down in Sheol, there you are." Out of context, out of frame, unclear for once where God fits in.

"I am crushed, I am only skin. Please bear with me." Please bear with me. Will you bear with me? I have asked you to wait—I have asked you to wait because I have known that, where you go, so too go I. "Laudato si mi Signore, per sora nostra Morte corporale, da la quale nullu homo vivente pò skappare." Blessed are you, my Lord, through our sister corporeal Death, from which no person living can escape. That is always what I have meant, that one day I will die, and having become nothing but ashes and dust our dust will mix together. Ilyse Kusnetz, that little poet facing her own imminent death, puts it exactly how I have always felt it for you:

that inconceivable lattice of flesh—how even
in death bodies cling to one another.

Clinging to you. Let me cling to you. I have done a very bad job clinging. I have not received your beautiful dress, or any of your beautiful books—though I know how you wanted me to have them. I have nothing to run my hand over which you yourself have touched, and so we phase through each other as matter and spirit. "Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." I repent, I repent, I can only repent in dust and ashes, because I can only touch you there. Please bear with me, please wait for me, like I've always asked, like I've always said. You would not have wanted to have been cremated, but you are ashes all the same. I do not want to be cremated, but am tempted to just be close to you. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, my hand to your hand in the ruin of the world. What a strange thing to hope for, what a strange aspiration! And like most hope, not wholly unmixed with fear. "Death, perhaps, to suffer," they say. "Judgement to undergo."

Do you remember that dream which we shared together, in the days after your death? We were down there, in the bowels of the Earth, that place which I knew was Sheol, and we watched as jellyfish of light butted their heads against the cavern roof. "For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour." A little lower in the heart of death, and a little less than littleness. Without mind, without memory, the fever of life ended, our very souls quenched out, thinking no more than brainless creatures butting against the rock. What a hope that was to me. What a consolation. There, at least, in death, there we would be hand-in-hand, even as our hands were rotted away and gone.

And do you remember the sadder vision which I had sometime later? I had just finished the Inferno at the time you passed away, which you had read before me, and which we had talked about. Then I read the Purgatorio, which you had also known, but which I was too late to have discussed. And then, at last, I read the Paradiso, and this you had not read in life, like pagan Ezra Pound "without a painted paradise." Do you remember how much I loved it, the show of lights and the splendour of divinity? And do you remember how I was utterly nauseous with fear, that there was a place I could know which you could not? How could you be my Virgil when you are my Beatrice? How could you, how could you, how dare you?

And yet I cannot feel that you are anywhere but here. I remember, shortly after, when I felt your spirit come into me, and take up residence there. I did not know what to make of it; I simply could not know. But it was like how I felt back when, as a child, I seemed to be surrounded by spirit, and though those visions have long since ceased, this one of you felt just as certain. There you were, a wisp of a thing, descending into me and mixing yourself up in my heart, so that my breath is yours, my blood is yours, my mouth is yours as much as it is mine. I cannot claim this vision with the certainty I felt it or I would seem to take ownership of you. I cannot let myself claim you so greedily as that. Yet that is why I continue to address you, to speak to you, to write to you. I feel as though you have borrowed my eyes, though I cannot hear you speak.

Father says, "I do not believe that our duty to love one another ends with death." I agree, which is why I love you still. As time goes on, your friends on Earth will only dwindle down, and so I must always be one of them. But what can I do for you here, in this place, in the face of an injustice I cannot make right, which I could not rectify in any way? A nineteen-year-old has killed herself, or, a nineteen-year-old has been murdered. You were sold poison, were encouraged to die, were watched in your dying moment and let to die, were thrown out of home at sixteen, were badly beaten at fourteen, all by different people, each one taking a role in that final moment when you died and you did not have to die. How can I love you practically when I cannot make one iota of any of it right? When I cannot even make myself right, after having been completely unprepared to help you, having damaged you all the more in the end? What can I possibly do?

"I do not believe that our duty to love one another ends with death." God, Nine, I love you more than life itself, yet I cannot give my life for you now. Though I wanted to. Though I needed to. Though I very nearly did—it would have been for nothing. Death is at best a solace for me; it is nothing at all for you, who lieth quietly in the soil and runneth through streams of water. But oh, what a comfort to me! "UN JOUR JE SERAI DE RETOUR PRÈS DE TOI." One day I'll be back close to you. Buried in the dust together. Shut up in the grave.

Father says, "First we go to Sheol." What a relief for me. My dream will come true, my aspiration will be realized, because on that day we will be in the same place. He says, "In Sheol there is a place of consolation and a place of torment." Here I admit to some fear, that you will be in one and I will be in the other, and we will be distant from each other. For a time I worried horribly that you would be in a place of torment, and I, in a place of bliss. But I repent of having entertained such an evil thought, like the sexton's prejudice against Ophelia. "But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented." I am the one who has received good, and I should be afraid of torment, unless I can be an instrument for the goodness of others—but what good can I do for you? I cannot stop thinking about how you had nothing, and gave away even what you did not have, even though I wished you hadn't. You silly anorexic girl, giving up what very little money you had for food to pay rent for your ex, or to donate to a funeral, or even to help out someone you didn't like that much. "I'd rather be a bit hungry for a couple days than have someone i care about on the street." At your best, you were more noble than I could imagine, and I can only ask you to pray for me to demonstrate the same. You did show that what I was was not yet enough.

But at least, if I am in Sheol, I will have the joy to see you, even if I burn in fire while you are in paradise, and we are separated by a gulf. I do not need you to cool my affliction at that time, because your joy is my joy. Yet Marcel Mauss wasn't wrong in his suspicion that a truly free gift, one which has no reciprocity, is not dignifying, because we are dignified in our being together and responding to each other. So if I want to love you, and do what I can for you, I will ask in return for your help now, while I am on Earth, and you can help me—and there is the reciprocity, what you can do and what I can do. Though I do not yet know what I can do for you. Pray that I may be inspired with the ability to do it.

Father says, "First we go to Sheol." And this is the comfort I have always sought. But this is also not the final word. Because he goes on with the story and says, "Then we return to Earth again." Here is the resurrection of the body, the judgement of the quick and the dead, exactly what I could not possibly have expected, which my heart of heart seeks and dreads. Can it be? Can it be? That there will be a time when all things will be brought to light, and all people stand together, and are judged and can plead for mercy. Can it be? What would that be? In a case like yours, that would be a joy beyond joys, a hope that finally a case as insoluble as yours may be addressed by a power which really can put it right, which really can wipe away the tears I cannot ever dry. Your tears. My tears? Not yet, because the reason I am crying is that I love you, and I don't know what I can do for you. May God redeem you, may Christ redeem you; all very good. But what can I do?

All will be brought to light. All secrets will be known. My heart will be poured out before the Lord. Are the contents very good, especially when it comes to you? Heaven knows. I have been at times so bitter and dulicitous toward you, so spiteful and angry; there is so much bile and ruination in me. There is so much I would keep hidden: "With their mouths they blessed, and inwardly, cursed." I don't desire for you to hear my curses. But more than anything in the world I want to act on my love for you, and all I have to offer is a filthy and sickly heart. And so I have no choice but to pray: Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison. I have no choice but to seek redemption, that what is in me may be made pure. Not for my own sake, and not for my own salvation, and not for my own joy. But in the hope of participating in yours. For love.

"Felt wrong not to say goodbye to you. I'm sorry, for this and more besides. Be well, be happy. I love you." This is what you said to me. This is what I must say to you. I cannot leave you without a word, and so I cannot hope to hide what I have felt from you. It would feel wrong not to say, at the very least, goodbye. And so I must speak to you, on that day where everything must be said; I cannot avoid saying sorry for everything that I must bring to light. I must say sorry, in order to say what I would really like to say, what I would like to pray for, what I would like to beg you to do: to be happy, to be well, now and for all time, forever. And this I have to say for one reason, in the hope of demonstrating one thing. Only that I love you, with a love that is strong as death. That you are my friend, now and forever, until the end of the age.

Open for me, my sister, my friend,
my dove, my perfect one.
For my head is soaked with dew,
my locks with the drops of the night.

I have hoped beyond hope for nothing more than the silence and the stillness of death, shared together. What if I hoped for something more than that? What if I hoped that there will come a day when I will sit under a tree and braid your hair, in a garden which has no end, in a creation which is made new, in the presence of your God and my God, and will love you perfectly? I have dreamed of the passing away of the world; what of the world to come? I have dreamed of my ashes kissing your ashes; what of my lips kissing your cheek? Yet I know that you are grievously at odds with life, and that your death was at least as much a suicide as it was a murder, and that you will need to be reconciled. And I cannot reconcile anything on my own, as I never cease to be aware. I am neither Lord nor Saviour. So what can I do?

And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest:
for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways;
To give knowledge of salvation unto his people
for the remission of their sins;
Through the tender mercy of our God;
whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us;
To give light to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

You have sat in darkness, and in the shadow of death. Let me give you light. You have sinned, as you have known and grieved and repented for. Let me teach you of salvation. When my mind is split open and its contents flow forth, I pray to God in all his tenderness to make those waters clean, to make my sacrifice holy, and to make instruments of grace of my thoughts. Cleanse what is horrible in me, that what is good might serve as an invitation back into the world. Endow me with a taste of your tenderness, that I may tenderly embrace my friends, and count all people among them. This is all that I can hope to give you now. This is what I desire to give you. This is what love means to me.

There is a kingdom that is coming. In it is the hope of both of us. There is the place where I will dwell with you, and I will be able to say to you what I could not say in this life: "Entreat me not to leave you or to return from following you; for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God." There is a kingdom that is coming where I hope that we will lodge with many siblings, sharing a people and a God, and going always where the other goes. And I would happily spend all the days of my life filling my mind with adorations and blessings, thanksgivings and praises, prayers and intercessions and oblations, so that when we reach the gates of that kingdom I will have something to show you, so that you will profit by me. I would give my life in this way, redundantly, adding nothing to the glory of God or to the strength of his salvation, just to participate. I would like to give my life so that, on that day, you will testify:

My lover speaks, and says to me,
Arise, my friend.
My fair one, come away.

For behold, the winter has passed,
and the rains are over and gone.

Blossoms appear in the land,
and the nightingale's time has come.

The turtledove sings in our land,
the fig perfumes young fruit,
and the vines blossom with fragrance.

Arise, my friend.
My fair one, come away.

So that, when you testify, you will remember me.