The Filling

Watch any movie or TV show that has a woman giving birth and you will see: screaming, yelling, hurling obscenities towards the husband, swearing to never have sex again.  I assume this is always supposed to be humorous.  Or at very least some sort of abstinence lesson for people.

These scenes annoy me.

I have given birth a time or two, and I can tell you what you see depicted is not the norm.

I have been a birth partner for a friend and I witnessed her silently go to a place where she breathed and rocked through each contraction.

Watch any movie or TV show where someone is dying and you will see a loving family surrounded at just the right moment to hear the words of wisdom said in a pained whisper of the dying person, just before he closes his eyes an the machine goes flatline.  A nurse magically appears and shuts off the monitors, as the closest family member shuts the eyes of the departed.

Death is not like this.

Unless it is an opera, then the dying person has enough time for one last aria before collapsing of consumption.

Like birth, death is messy.

Birth and death can be slow or fast, never knowing the exact date or time of either.

People, including myself,  have put a lot of emphasis on both events.  One of joy, one of sorrow.

But what about the in between?

Do we not measure the myriad of events in our lifetime as eventful as a birth or a death? Are they not as compelling to make note of?

Sitting next to me my mother has read the Sunday paper three times already.  Fixating on folding the paper in just the right way to make her happy.  A simple repetitive act that brings her both frustration and joy.

No, it isn't a birth, or a death.  It is just an act.  Probably muscle memory, and yet she does it with so much emotion it must count for something.

When I lay in bed in the morning I can feel that the bed is so much more comfortable in the morning than it was a few hours previously when I crawled inside the sheets.  I wonder how the sheets became softer, the pillows more supportive, the blanket placed in just the perfect way to make me happy.  Complete joy.

Knowing I have to leave my cocoon is a dreaded task, I linger in joy as long as I can.

Will this be written about in my obituary?

"She loved her bed, especially in the cool crisp mornings of fall..."

Not very noteworthy is it?  But to me it is.

My mother has now moved on to removing leaves from my deck where we are sitting.  She beds and picks them up one at a time and gently throws them off the deck.  The leaves bother her now.

I want to go back to a time where leaves were raked pile high and  I would run and jump in them creating chaos and laughter.  My mother wants to organize them.

Between birth and death are so many small trivial moments that are often not even shared with others, and possibly not even noticed by the people doing them.  They are forgotten, discarded.

I was once told that my father fought his death to the very end.  I was not there.  The image of him boxing a figure in black always came to mind.  A match to the Death.

But what of his life?  I do not mean the items listed on a resume, or in an obituary.  He loved to sit with his mother on her front porch.  Much as I now sit with my mother.

What did he think about during those times?

Are our personal thoughts just as important as our actions that occur between birth and death?

I have been accused of "living in my head".  Maybe.  Does it matter if I stop what I am doing when a cool breeze passes?  Isn't it enough that I stopped and noticed it and maybe even recalled a time in my past when I felt a similar breeze?  Or do I need to document my thoughts so they take form and and matter and therefore my obituary can also say, "She used to stop to feel every cool breeze."

I had a friend who lived on a farm.  You could tell that her joy came from her animals, and the harvests she produced.  Physical actions that made up her life.  What was she thinking when she took from the earth what she planted?

I do not know what  I thought when I was born.  I do not know what I will think when I die.

I know that right now there is a breeze, a respite from the heat, albeit brief.  My mother and partner are laughing, I crack my knuckles.

We three sitting here, often in silence, or in convoluted conversations that make no sense at all.

This is life.  My actions, my thoughts, my bed, breezes, the babies I raised, the books I stopped reading because they bored me, the cigarettes consumed, the lovers I took and left, the trips to the emergency rooms, the muddy dogs I cursed at.

I do not think about the fashion shows I did, or the magazines I have worked for, or any of the things that would impress on the page of a resume.

I think about now.  Now is all I have.