On Writing an Obituary
by Lou Saurez
It isn’t as if you have to know
the one dead. Someone gives you
all the facts you need to tell
the essential story we want
you to tell. No more though.
Say his age, the family who
outlived him, the family
who didn’t. Not how much
he loved to step outside to see
the morning glitter in the pines,
feel the dew or frost on his feet,
how it was on nights too dark
to drive on roads not edged
by street lights, ordinary roads
suddenly thin and unfamiliar,
on nights the language of the cats
and skunks nosing through
his yard after dark sounded more
foreign, more feral than ever,
or how often he would peer out
of a study window at the stars
and marvel at the other worlds
we share this space with,
the heading we’re on, the wonders
we’re coursing toward or away from.
Just his closest intimates will
care about what killed him --
whether cancer, a collision,
failure to swim; who stood
at his bedside; whether the last
words spoken, no matter how
clumsily, consoled anyone.
Write ten or so stories
in an afternoon: only the last
stays whole long, not because
it reminds you of a nephew’s
aneurysm, an aunt who in time
forgot your name, your face.
The last story stays because
it is the last, and in some
flimsy phrase or fact the dead
survives, if evanescently.
It’s as if you’re walking through
an open door or on a walkway
and a cobweb catches you,
like the other living among us,
unaware, gossamer and glue
bewildering your face and neck
until you can clear them away,
your fingers dancing across
utter air like a magician’s
performing a sleight of hand.
It’s startling at first-- how
a thing so slight, so gauzy can
astonish you with such terrible
speed. And then before
you have a chance to fathom why,
you brush it away so instinctively.
