and then i remembered that 72 years ago on this same morning, marie emerick, my great grandmother awoke into a weighty presence of sadness and the palpable feeling that her life had collapsed. by the end of the evening, it would. her life, which appeared in pieces, would end at her hand and a bullet through her heart.
it was 1938. she was a young mother with three children (my grandpa then 6 years old). she lived in a little house next to her father's place in pueblo, colorado. her husband, who made a living at the nearby steel factory, was leaving the marriage and may have already been involved with someone else. he was a hard worker, facing his own difficulties. but kindness sometimes did not show up in the way he handled the pressures of financial instability. a few years before, because of the great depression, they had lost the home she loved. somewhere in this time, marie purchased a piano---because she loved to play. when her husband came home to see the purchase, his anger tore up the keys and strings. and then of course, there is the reality that her mother had, for at least several years, been living at the state hospital a.k.a. insane asylum about 10 minutes up the road.
these details don't say everything. but i received them a year or so ago during a time that felt equal parts exciting and impossible. somehow wearing marie's story on my skin for this past year has given me the hardly speakable ounces of courage to explore the conversation of how any of us get through this life-falling-apart stuff. some of that conversation happened when i arrived at her grave last summer. it was a private exchange between a grandmother and granddaughter who would never meet, but who connected in their own ways through the experience of loss. i doused her grave with the bright oils of lemon, lime, clove, and orange. and after a while, we agreed that a citrus-smelling-sense of humor and playful salsa moves (with juicy hip action) were some of the best ways to get through anything.
i've always felt that you can take any moment and connect it back quite far. in this case, i connect this moment, with the soft light in my friend's washington, d.c., home back to marie emrick. her sadness and death led me to explore questions about my own life, which led me to historical research about mental health care, which led me to examining patient records in morganton, which led to meeting my mentor at school phoebe pollitt, which led to me learning about pellagra in the south, which led to me reading a book by a professor at american university and then making an appointment to meet him. and that is what i'm about to do, on this day 72 years after the day that marie awoke for the last time.
so, marie. last year i said goodbye with a little salsa lesson. just the basic moves. i hope you've been practicing. this morning (because i need to leave soon to walk to yoga) i send you off with some mary oliver. i bet you know this one already. you'll probably feel a few of the lines deep in the space of your throat and in the lightness of your heart. douse yourself with the smell of oranges and any tiny thing that will bring a smile to your face.
One or Two Things
by Mary Oliver
Don’t bother me.
I’ve just
been born.
The butterfly’s loping flight
carries it through the country of the leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes
for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower.
The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever,
which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.
One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and through the stiff
flowers of lightning — some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.
But to lift the hoof!
For that you need
an idea.
For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then
the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
“Don’t love your life
too much,” it said,
and vanished
into the world.
