The Dark Lady at Our Door

Death does not come in a single instant...it comes in waves. It washes though the house in little torrents of something I can barely describe--it makes the heart pound and quiets the voice. I pace, though there is nowhere to go. I whisper, though I know she can not hear me. My mother is caught in a world beyond. Her eyes are closed and she avoids suffering through sleep.

Last weekend she was fine. Last weekend she walked among the living and laughed and smiled and joked and shared in memories and ate salad. Today, she coughs and wheezes and retches and sleeps. Tomorrow it may change yet again. She might be better once the stronger medicines have time to build in her system. Or she might not.

She complained of a headache. She pointed to the specific place where her head hurt: right under the metal plate that marks where they opened her skull to remove the tumor two years ago. It throbs, she says. There is pressure, she says.

It's probably back, the doctor says.

And there is a lady in a dark cloak standing at our door. She does not knock, and though I know her, I do not let her in. No one else sees her. No one else senses her. No one else knows that she comes to visit whenever the house fills with the mist of the unseen--when my mother slips in and out of our world. The lady is quiet and patient. She comes and goes. And sometimes I fear her and sometimes--when my mother is in severe pain-- I wish she would stay. But I dare not ask her to enter.

Eventually, we need something from the store and I walk past the dark lady like a skittish child. I slip through our doorway and escape into the warm night air where the cicadas buzz and life throngs thick in the summer heat. But as I drive, I play a song over my radio that I know is the voice of that dark lady at our door:

A kite above a graveyard grey
At the end of the line, far far away
A child holding on to the magic of birth and awe


Oh how beautiful it used to be
Just you and me, far beyond the sea
The water scarce in motion, quivering still


At the end of the river, the sun down beams
All the relics of a life long lived
Here weary traveler rest your mind
Sleep the journey from your eyes


Good journey love, time to go
I've checked your teeth and warmed your toes
In the horizon I see them coming for you


The mermaid grace, the forever call
Beauty in spyglass on an old man's porch
The mermaids you turned loose brought back your tears

At the end of the river, the sun down beams
All the relics of a life long lived
Here weary traveler rest your mind
Sleep the journey from your eyes

When I return home, the lady is gone. My mother still sleeps and my father has put the lights of the kitchen on dim. I sit in the half shadows out in the living room, and somewhere behind my eyes, I cry.