for Mel Laubach


You know the seasons; how there is no stopping them. Spring arrives, blossoms, passes into Summer. Summer waxes, grows to fruit and harvest. Autumn comes with decay and death. Winter is the Spirit time.

We, you and I, we have seen a pine die whole — how it winks out brilliantly in fluorescent colors, and how that last unprocessed light is sent back into the forest, admitting much love formerly unexpressed.

My friend died in April. No sign yet of the bluebird that lives in my meadow. My friend died in April when the mountain ash begins to burst with bloom.

My friend left on April 18th when the grass in my shadowed yard is nearly ready to be cut for the first time and the world outside my kitchen door ready to smell like the meadows of Heaven.

How dare he leave me like this?

I had ideas for us. No idea it would be like this.

We were going to hike Bass Creek; explore the mouth of Fish Creek; raft the river and watch the herons; swim the cold water; hang out under that pine at the Big Rock Reststop and make art and sell it cheap to tourists. We were going to sit together as old men.

Fine thing, him leaving like this. Fine thing, him leaving me in the spring like this.

O Man, I was going to give him shit for cutting his hair, for not getting on to that third book, for not painting more and painting more — and what about all those paintings never started that I will never see?

My friend died in the spring; was gone so suddenly that it left me, it left us, it left us all, reexamining our last words with him, afraid to delete his last emails, searching for clues and searching for a chance to be guilty about not changing his path that last week, that last day, that moment before he backed out of the driveway.

Consider Blodgett Canyon. He was headed there. Said he was going to hike. There is something special about that U-shaped canyon. I have a painting at home — Arlo’s work — of Blodgett Canyon. Mel will get there all right, but now he’ll get there as ashes. He will be OK with that. He’ll be in the soil up there, in the trees, in the air with the eagle; he will cut the rock with the river, and even a big fire won’t discomfort him.

What can I do?

He is out of my hands.

You know the last thing he said to me, to my lady and I? “I don’t want those long looks looking at me. I don’t want to see any long faces.” It wasn’t about this, but what a wonderful mystery. Then an instant chance encounter on a dangerous highway in a beautiful valley, and now no one who understands my brand of dark humor, my fake nasty cynicism, no one who knows my anger quite like he did; no one who reminds me of whom I am quite like he did. He taught me equanimity over and over with his own tireless good humor and inner peace.

The shaman once told us, he and I, that our fire was not hot enough. Well…OK. But I know he once kicked a brick wall so hard he broke his toe. I saw him once, ready to fight.

Now all those incomplete observations, those unfinished thoughts, those seeds of deeds — and what else, what other else? — must yield to compost and then to dust.

Fire? How I wish my grief were like a fire. A sudden explosion of cries, of lament, of hair-ripping, a holocaust of grief eating itself. Then furnaces hite-hot, the gauges pegged out, steam billowing out of the ports and out of my eyes. Then it’s gone. Sudden emptiness, the cooling, and a quiet place in the shadowed green.

Instead I am limp. After those first sobs, a few tears. And then, in little surprises over the next long while, when I see his smile on my desktop — him offering tofu to some pretty hikers — when I think of Susan left alone, when I regard my own loss, my eyes pour forth quietly.

Grief is a big, sudden thing, and sorrow a long, dark, wet season.

Hey, Man, where are you? You were just here. How can we catch up on all those times we had coming? We, all of us, were just getting to know you.

My friend, you died in April when things have just turned toward the better. You died in mid-April and
am I deluding myself to find your spirit
reflecting off strangers in the mall
reminding me of the pine dieing whole
and the last flashbulb burst of love
disappearing into the forest?

I am helpless, Man.

I am helpless before the seasons.




MSO Public Library
22 April, 2004

Want to comment on this Prose? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Prose and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...