Suddenly, Last Summer

 

April 20, 2025. 6:50 am
It has been far too long since I've written anything down in my notebook. It was a hard winter. Frank went into heart failure in November, an unfortunate co-morbidity of his particular cancer. After many appointments and overnight stays in the cold and windy city throughout January and February, he had an aortic valve replacement in March. The medical care was exceptional and he recovered well. But it has taken a toll on him. He is smaller, frailer. But his determination to live has only increased. He walks 15 minutes every day, rain or shine. He stacks wood until he feels the all-too-familiar, slight nagging pain in his back. Sometimes it takes an hour for this pain to emerge; sometimes half an hour. But he persists. He is a superhero.

So I begin another season with good intentions of writing each morning, pencil to paper. It is spring after all! But this morning, I struggle to make sense, to form any proper, cohesive thoughts. I am still tired from the winter. Random phrases drift up. I write them down before they are replaced by another:

Early morning in the greenhouse.
Everything is fresh and alive.
The scent of bee balm.
The first sip of morning coffee is always the best.
Frank snoring softly in the pre-dawn dark.
The quietness of the house.
The caw of the crows on the oak tree.
Small blue butterflies.
No cars on the road yet.
A single leaf falls.
I see trees from every window.
The first car drives by. It is red.
The scent of sandalwood soap on my skin,
The groundlessness of being.
A single blue jay screeches.
The fire crackles to life.
The whisper-thinness of birch sapling.
Avoid unnecessary complications.
Bees dance on the pulmonaria.

A quote from Tennessee Williams' one act play, Suddenly, Last Summer, jumps into my head. I only remember the first line, 'The world is violent and mercurial - it will have its way with you.' I know there is more, much, much more to this quote. I put my pencil down, close my eyes; inhale, exhale. I am back in Karen Brathwaite's English Literature class at the University of Toronto. 1985. 'We live in a perpetually burning building...' If only I had my textbooks. I reach for my phone, type in the first line, and, ah, there it is:

The world is violent and mercurial - it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love - love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share; being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building and what must save us from it, all the time, is love.
Tennesse Williams

April 29, 2025, 7:30 a.m.
We've had overnight rain. The sky is heavy with clouds and the air feels damp, fresh, almost like Scotland. As I look out the kitchen window, a tiny warbler flies into the porch and perches on a bamboo stick that leans against the railing. I don't know my warblers well enough to guess what it is. Within a moment, it flies off again and my heart sings with gratefulness. Thank you for visiting me, I whisper.

I turn away from the window and put the kettle on for coffee. I was too tired to wash the supper dishes last night. I had spent 7 hours in the garden, shoveling mulch and soil and building a new garden at the side of the front door. My habit of over-doing it results in a sore body today and a possible strain to my sternocleidomastoid neck muscles. A headache forms at the back of my neck and moves upwards; I try to redirect my thoughts away from it. 'Secondary suffering' the Buddhists call it: the suffering that comes from suffering. So I let it be. Inhale, exhale.

Frank wakes. He walks over to me in the kitchen. Good morning, my darling, he says, wrapping his arms around me. He is warm from bed. His strong, East Coast accent makes me smile. Good mornin, ma darlin is really what he says. I think we need a fire this morning. It feels damp in here. He sits down on the old wooden milking stool that lives at the side of the woodstove. He opens the heavy wrought iron door and begins to build his fire with pine kindling and birch bark. He loves to make fires. He explains his technique to me. I've heard this many times over but I smile and listen, knowing that this whole process brings him joy. Cutting trees, splitting and stacking wood, finding birch bark for kindling. It's what he does, who he is.

He stops talking and looks over to me. Before they put me in the oven, would you wrap me in birch bark? I burst out laughing at the absurdity of this. But it also makes some sort of crazy sense. Of course a woodsman would be wrapped in birch bark before being cremated! He is not afraid to joke about his death. He's been doing it right from the start. It makes some people deeply uncomfortable but I understand his need for this. It's his way of saying goodbye to his dreams, to his physical capacity, to his relationships. It's his way of honouring all that is important to him while remaining light-hearted with his irreverent, almost slap-stick humour. But I'm also learning that it's his way of helping me say goodbye as he prepares to leave his body. He has lived a good life, a very good life, even through all the hardship and grief. He wants to die a good death. He wants to remain true to himself to the end and he will.

I bring over two mugs of steaming, hot coffee and we sit together as the fire crackles and sparks to life. The house is bathed in warm light and the sun begins to peek through the forest. The day begins again.