Speaking for the Dead

[lwood]

This story does not begin in one place.

It begins in several. It really began with a lady who sold shoes and had a few interesting hobbies.

My part began several years later, when I lived in Cleveland and the now-retired shoe-seller lived in San Jose, California. I allow myself a self-indulgent aside where I track my progress through e-mail addresses.

The part which compels me to write happened on 20 October, 2002, in a room in a hospital owned by a well-known, very large HMO, also near San Jose, California. It explains the real reason why I wasn't with the slashgirls in Sacramento this past weekend, as opposed to the reason I thought was real when I said I couldn't go.

All of these are long, strange trips. I am charged to find our mutual friends, our caballeros; I am charged to summon, stir, and call them up, and this I will do. Since that charge was laid on me, I found one of them, told him what the news was. My, that was a profoundly shitty thing to write:

"Hi, I haven't written to you in a couple years. One of our mutual friends is dying. How are you?"

I haven't been close to the lady in question for a couple years, and so I wonder how much of my pain isn't really mine, but an expectation of pain, a sharing of it. In colder moments I realise that this is really practice; most of my close friends are fifteen years or more older than I, after all. They will hurt more. There goes N, with one last lesson on the way out, and I thank her for it.

This was my first real deathwatch. It certainly won't be my last.

None but myself have charged me to speak for the dead,

One: Once There Was a Lady Who Sold Shoes

Once there was a lady who sold shoes. This was not all she was, nor all she did; it was only a job. It was not the only thing she did to bring in money, either, but this is the one I remember the most stories of, and so I write of the shoes.

Another of those other things was that she was a great fan of science fiction during its halcyon golden years -- and I once took home her entire collection of Heinlein to prove it (she'd grown tired of him, she wanted them to go to a good home).

In the where and when of which we speak, in California when the world was newer and brighter, it was Not All Right to be certain things.

This lady was more than one of those things -- not only fen, but a witch. Third-degree Gardnerian Wiccan long before it was hip, thank you so much, and because of people like her who did their work in secret, many of us can work more openly today.

She married, was again single, then remarried. She has touched many, all over the pagan and fannish communities of the SF Bay Area. Her remarriage was to an accomplished filker (not just parodist, thank you).

But now she isn't really any of that. Now, what's left of her is inhabiting a run-down neighborhood of a body where several unsavory sorts are racing for the finish line.

Two: There Was a Young Girl from Ohio...

Deep in the mists of a different-but-related antiquity, the Internet was born, and among all its myriad ways was Usenet. Related more to today's message boards than to mailing lists, it was a way for a publically-oriented post to toddle its way around the world at the then-blazing speeds.

Somewhat later, I joined that party. I discovered Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and e-mail in 1990, as part of the now-defunct Cleveland Free-Net, and Usenet soon after. In September, 1992, when I went to university, I roomed with a spoiled Daddy's Girl from Connecticut (no relation to my delightful clone walkyrja, I assure you) for a week, decided to bugger that for a game of soldiers, and moved doubled up with camwyn instead.

On 17 September, 1992, I made my first post to alt.pagan, which was my first post to a newsgroup that went any further than the machine I was dialed into at the time.

[A self-referential note, if I may: the above is pure naked-baby-picture level blackmail fodder. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, I always say -- have the whole hoard.

You can track my progress across the country and through friends by e-mail addresses, really. ak071@cleveland.freenet.edu never made it to a public archive, nor did aa054@medina.freenet.edu (based in Medina, I never lived there, but one of their phone numbers, the one in Brunswick, was a local call). law10@po.cwru.edu is where the record begins. gaea@panix.com, starting from 18 June 1993, marked my dropping out of college and move to New York City. 15 December, 1994, saw my virtual presence move to Berkeley with lorrie@mellers1.psych.berkeley.edu, right around the time my physical presence did likewise. The machine moved to Chicago in August, 1997, making me lorrie@araw.mede.uic.edu. araw died, long live lorrie@tala.mede.uic.edu , the Usenet address I (rarely) post from today.]

On alt.pagan, I met and made a ready set of online friends: mark "silverdragon" roth, Baird Stafford, Ounce (felis uncia), Jim Hamp, and of course ardaniel. I remember them fondly, and among them was a lady we'll call N. When I moved to California, N was one of my first real life pagan contacts. ravan was another.

N, as you may have guessed, used to sell shoes...

I was never, and am not now, one to feel comfortable moving among a group of unfamilar people without someone familiar to cling to, so it was just as well that in February of 1996, N decided I needed to go to Pantheacon, the local Pagan convention.

And boy, I needed preparation. You see, while I'd read some books and had been tossing words around on the topic for three and a half years by then (egad), I hadn't actually seen groups of pagans before. Not in any open ritual, and certainly not in their native habitat. They were proposing I go to a convention where there'd be nigh unto two thousand of these weirdos: I needed competence, and needed it fast.

I was never formally N's student (to start with, I was never Wiccan), but it was she who gave me those first important lessons in pagan etiquette, lessons I've not forgotten, like "don't touch others' things without asking," and "never, ever, give out contact information unless know for a fact that that is all right (and even then, think twice)." Not just rules, though: at her kitchen table, she and ravan prepared me for the convention by teaching me how to ground, center, and shield.

During that 1996 Pantheacon, N introduced me to her good and old friend, Diana Paxson. Later, privately, N confided to me that Diana was into Germanic paganism, which as far as N had known was solely populated by racists, neo-Nazis, and sexist asses, but that obviously couldn't be so, because Diana had far more sense than to get into anything like that.

In the interim, there were many warm conversations around that kitchen table. I learned to make guacamole, and N and Ravan were my first test subjects. There were stories of every old SF writer you could think of, of what it had been to be a pagan when you couldn't be out, of selling shoes...

... there was a story ... there was/is/will always be a story.

It is not this story, but it is a corollary to the third place this entry properly begins. It is the Story of the Death of Randall Garrett, former lover of N (this gives nothing away; Randall was, by all accounts, a very generous fellow in that way).

It went a little like this. I know the medical facts aren't quite right -- this is how I heard it, and as any gatherer of stories know, how it happened is not necessarily the same thing:

Randall had herpes. Not the usually-genital kind, but the usually-cold-sores kind. One day, instead of crawling down the nerves and popping up on his lips, it crawled uphill instead -- and infected his brain. The thing is that it takes three days for it to get fatal up there, but seven days to run the test to make sure before treatment could begin.

So we got everyone together that we thought could do a damn bit of good, and we all did the biggest damn healing I'd ever seen, trying to keep him from dying.

Did it work? Oh, it worked, all right. Randall Garrett stayed alive for a damn long time after that, if you could call it that: his brain was that of a six-year-old, unless he was having a lucid moment, and then we all saw how much he didn't want to be there anymore.

Included with this, part and parcel of it, was the very sincere wish that N "not go out like Randall. Please not like that! Promise me..."

I promised.

She asked me to drive her to another deathwatch, of John McClimans, but I didn't know him. I wandered the hall at Kaiser's Oakland hospital while those who did know him did what had to be done. Another dark night saw my former co-husband and I driving her to the emergency room of another Kaiser hospital when she couldn't breathe, and their diagnosis was asthma. We got there at ten PM, left about four or five AM, and went for breakfast.

That brings us to the third beginning, but before we go there:

I don't want to write a eulogy. I have no intention of whitewashing who N was; to do so is to be unfaithful to the memory. So:

N also smoked like a chimney and refused to modify her habits in the slightest when one diagnosis after another, including diabetes, came down the pike over the next six years. In 1997, she went to Pantheacon again... in a wheelchair I rented for her and often pushed. I helped Diana Paxson unload her car, participated in my first couple rituals, and got smacked with the 'This Is Your Calling' stick. After 1997, she no longer had the strength or cash to make it to Pantheacon anymore. After I lost all but the most intermittent contact, I hear she was diagnosed with diabetes, regularly refused to do anything about it, lost a couple toes, and started to get a little slippery in the cognition.

Throughout all of this, I supported a series of Macintoshes when I could. Heck, as countgeiger was working for Apple at the time, we managed a very good deal on a Mac for N at one point.

Once I started regularly attending Hrafnar meetings and especially when I joined the usually-a capella pagan chorus named Gaia's Voice, I made the acquaintance of, and working relationship with, N's stepdaughter, D. D did not like N (I am being Tactful here). D forbade any word of her activities getting back to N. D made a pile of accusations about N that didn't seem true when I first met N, but were certainly gaining in truth value as N's health started its slow decline, the myriad pains bringing her poorer psychological traits to the fore. Because of these things, I started drawing away from N and Ravan.

Cut ahead to about a month ago. Word comes through ardaniel that Ravan, of the old alt.pagan cabal, has a LiveJournal at ravan... and that N is dying.

The deathwatch was ticking. Had been for awhile; only then was it loud enough for me to hear. For all the really hairy details, go and read ravan, all the posts about the situation are public, but the short version is: N was dying slowly and badly, and tried to hurry it along with pills... for which I don't blame her in the slightest. Ravan was getting increasingly frustrated over the situation with N and N's husband G. Ravan, too, remembers Randall...

By now, I am rather good friends with Diana, aka The Inimitable DLP. DLP is on the local Old Crones' Network, and they're itching to get their fingers into the situation. Just as soon as N's out of ICU, BG, the Crones' Crone, will have a look-see and then Things will be Decided, but the most likely outcome, given G's reports, will be a bit of magical encouragement for N to get up and get on, already.

N was moved out of ICU late last week. Just after G Update #13, DLP and I got added to the list of people getting information.

N's doctor offered to put N on Comfort Care, where no drugs are allowed but painkillers.

G accepted, and N's doctor allowed as how N hadn't much time left. I agreed: my whatever-you-call-it sense was tingling. Sunday I could do by myself, Monday would require a pickup from a BART, Tuesday and Wednesday I had work... sensors were indicating that Thursday would be Too Late. Little alarm bells said, soon soon soon, and I listened.

... and now we can begin a third time.

Three: Many Partings

Saturday Night:

Diana peered up at me from the Pagemaker layout job she was working on. "Well, [the local Crone Patrol] were going to go and pay her a visit, so I was going to go with them."

I took a deep breath, and admitted a weakness. "Diana, I need you for me support."

She blinked. This changed things. "Oh. Tomorrow afternoon, then? I'll call you when I'm up?"

I reflexively rubbed at my left temple. "Yeah. Then. Thank you."

Sunday Afternoon:

The directions would have worked, but they were inefficient, so once I remembered where the hospital was, I didn't bother much with them. I saw the necessity of going, but I wasn't necessarily in a hurry.

Ravan said the Crone Patrol would arrive in "the evening," and Diana made mention of a projected arrival for them of "sometime between 2:30 and 3." We realised halfway down there that if Diana's words were anything but true, we'd all arrive together. Ravan's information was inaccurate...

I had expected a rather brief bedside visit, more for my benefit than N's. I didn't expect N to be conscious or aware, so a brief goodbye, then leave the hospital, coffee with Ravan, then back home. There were a couple optional things that could have happened for extra creepy points, like N dying while I watched, but I figured it would be swift and essentially solo.

No.

A wizard is never late -- nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.

So we all arrived precisely when we were meant to. DLP and I found G standing in the doorway, and three older women inside, chanting quietly, Work thick in the air with a drum beating as softly as could be managed. When they paused for a moment, DLP and I each took N's hand, greeted her, let her know we were there.

N noticed DLP, but didn't really notice me. I didn't want to stare, but I needed to. I needed to drink it all in, see true, explore what had become of my old friend.

N had gained considerable weight, and often moved restlessly under the thin hospital sheets. The line of her jaw was totally gone, enveloped in fat. Hazel eyes rolled, not always in sync with each other. Dried spittle ringed her toothless lips, and she had sores, scabs, or hematomas scattered across her. There was a cannula in her nose, an IV in her arm. While she might occasionally hoot, words were rare, and only one sentence was intelligible. N usually breathed through the cannula, but her occasional oral inhalation wasn't so much breathing as snorkelling.

I compared the wreck on the bed with the bright, sharp lady who had no trouble telling me that you know, when it was time for the Great Rite, the rest of the coven went to McDonald's for coffee and didn't talk about it. I looked... I looked, I sensed, did all that hoopty woowoo shit. What there was of N that might call herself N was barely there, and what was left was in a dazed fog. If -- if, you caught her attention, it was like a swimmer trying to break the surface with cinder blocks chained to her feet, a picture not at all helped by the fact that she was drowning in her own snot.

Tell me again why assisted suicide is not a kindness. She was on a morphine drip already; where is the kindness in not just dialing that bitch up to eleven and letting her just fade to black and wake up somewhere where it doesn't hurt anymore?

The animal part of her was blindly clinging to the meat, the part that referred to itself in the first person was lost in fog, and anything above that... well... that was what we were here for, now wasn't it?

DLP and I joined the work, encouraging N to move on. They said things like, 'in your own time, when it is right to do so,' but they were weasel words, karmic copouts; we were there to help hasten that as best we might, and we all knew it. I stood near the door, dropping into warder-head as the songs they sung were not all familiar to me, and because to most of them I was a stranger. I felt my wings open and stretch behind me while I stood at the wall. Not white, not anymore -- glossy and black. I have not seen them white since my birthday, but that's another long entry...

When they specifically wanted to devoke the elements from N, I suggested that the door be closed. The devocation was followed by quiet, powerful chanting.

Some time during the chanting, Ravan, knowing none of this, expecting DLP, Geoff, and I but not much woowoo, knocked on the door on a room pretty damn thick with it. She joined us, and work continued...

Eventually, the consensus of the group reached a stopping point. I held N's hand a second time at a pause, and this time her eyes tracked and she squeezed back. I kissed her forehead.

"Help me," she gasped. Those were the only intelligible words any of us heard from her, and she said them more than once.

I wondered if she was, right then and there, asking us to help her die or to help her hang on.

I have to believe in what she had always said. I have to believe, and live by, the word I gave, that she wouldn't go out like Randall -- as best I could, anyway, as she'd already set herself up for an extended departure long before I was back in the loop. I have to believe that the fact that this trip to the hospital was precipitated by an empty bottle of pills was a pretty strong vote from the Land of N.

I have to believe that if she meant it the other way just then, that it was lizard-brain fear, clinging to the meat and howling, because the N I knew would not have wanted this. She said it, believed it, and I gave my word.

When we left, I took her hand again, stroked and kissed her forehead again, and said, "Goodbye, N." Then I smiled, because singing dirges is only my way if I'm Very Serious, and Very Serious is not my usual wont. "Besides, when you get to the other side, you'll do even better at being a meddlesome old biddy. I expect you to come and make a nuisance of yourself; you've got my number."

DLP laughed, which was fine as I meant that as much for her as for N or I. The group broke up, and DLP and I headed home. N was still breathing in her bed, but we had done what we might. If it is not enough this night, well, soon. Before Samhain for sure, I should think.

I could not post this until N's story came to its right and proper end -- until I was speaking for the dead, and not the dying. At 3:25 this morning, N exhaled... and then did not inhale again. She is dead.

In February, when it is Hrafnar's Disir-Blot, I will raise the horn in N's memory, and because it will be sacred space I will not feel forced to pseudonyms. I will not expect to hear from N until she's processed her death issues and paperwork, of course, if then -- but I do expect at least one visit, eventually. Just so I get word, you understand.

But for now:

Stretch your wings, my friend.

Stretch them and fly.

-- Lorrie

Comments

[emberleo.livejournal.com]

May your friend rest well.

Please, tell me about your wings.

--Ember--

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Let me know if you can't read this post (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=lwood&itemid=17212).

-- L

Ohh, yes, but...

[emberleo.livejournal.com]

What about their blackness, from your birthday?

(If I'm being too...er nosy, just tell me.)

--Ember--

Re: Ohh, yes, but...

[lwood.livejournal.com]

No, you're not being nosy. It's all tied up in acceptance and recognition and stuff, and it's overall good, it's because I got something I wanted, but I'm reluctant to post it. I shouldn't be, really, but now I'm rather busy and can't give it the attention it desires!

Soon. Promise.

-- Lorrie

[bellacrow.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

I just saw a post from D that made me put 2 and 2 together.

*sigh*

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Which two and which other two? Hell, which D? Let's take this to e-mail...

-- Lorrie

[truwest.livejournal.com]

Thanks for letting us see her through you. Well told, too.

That relentless faucet-drip of time passing is never more tangible than in the lead-up and follow-after of someone's death.

And I'm with you: I wish there were options like assisted suicide. But as it is now, there's only the meaning to be gained in submitting (or witnessing someone else's submission) to something that's ultimately beyond one's control...or truncating your own decline early enough that you're capable of ending it yourself.

That decision seems to be a difficult one to make for oneself. A dear friend died in her midlife from cancer. Professionally she had had close contact with that experience before, and had said (before it ever was an issue for her personally) that she would end it early; she didn't want to go through that long decline. But when the time came, she did go through it. I never asked her why; my guess was that it was a mix of her not wanting to lose any of the remaining days when she was still capable, and not wanting to cause her parents and sister any grief greater than what they were already going through.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Thanks for letting us see her through you. Well told, too.

You're welcome -- and thank you for the compliment.

That decision seems to be a difficult one to make for oneself.

No, I disagree -- it's easy to make that decision, but hard to stick to it in the clutch. Then there's the question of "Is this what this person would have wanted were they in their right mind to make this decision?" Of course, if they were in their right mind, there'd be no decision to make, so when all one has left is one's base self-preservation instinct clinging to the meat, in a tug o' war with...

... well, there's the question, yes? You hope it's the rest of the mind pulling with you against the lizardy hindbrain when you start yanking.

Not like I didn't go into this in way too much detail above anyway. 8-)

-- Lorrie

[candice.livejournal.com]

Such a beautiful sad story. One of these days I'll
catch up with you moreso than livejournal.

candice (ravenos)
nonreligious occultists r'us.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Thank you -- and sure! Respectively. 8-)

-- Lorrie