Snap

Snap

It’s a specialty, a trick I like to do.
I stand with a relative, a friend, a pet,
bend the camera lens back,
point it in our direction,
center the unseen frame around us and
push the button.
Snap.
Moments recorded—a laugh, a guffaw,
tenderness. The picture may stop but
we go on.

2001: I stand next to my father on top of
an impossibly thin tower, twenty stories high.
From it we can see the relentless expanse of
the central Florida lake country.
“Dad, come here…”
“Huh?” he replies. He has been losing
his hearing at an alarming rate lately.
His hands shake too.
“Come here, to the edge, I want to take a picture of us.”
“Oh, okay.”
The wind blows our hair and we can
see for miles, even the house he will
live in, the house he will take his life in.
I am 38.
Snap.

2002: I kneel down next to my mom in
her favorite peach wingback chair.
Chemo and radiation have left her bald and thin.
The regret, the resignation, the despair,
the quiet fear is omnipresent in her eyes.
I point the camera at us—and something else,
nameless… not my father’s ghost but
something far worse: the empty space he left us.
I am 39.
Snap.

2003: I stand in the half-light by the glass doors.
I have had a tooth removed but the area
is not healing. I have what dentists call “dry socket”—
and it hurts. My face, puffy and distended on
one whole side gazes into the lens.
Today is my birthday.
All around me is empty space, shimmering, swollen.
I am an orphan, alone. They will never get
to see me turn 40.
Snap.

© JEF 2006

Ten years ago today...

1941 - 2002

I Am My Mother’s Keeper

In the end, she lives in all our former homes at once.
My father is gone, destroyed by his own hand,
it ripples backward and forward, like
he was never there. He was never anywhere.
It’s just me and her.

In New York, she has cancer, tumors everywhere.
They grow on her back, strangle her spine,
kill nerves, paralyze. She can’t walk. She is in her bedroom,
upstairs. Mine is next door, with my toy box.
I bring her crackers, water, tea.
There’s not much I can do to help.

In Miami, she sleeps a lot. In the bed
with the purple velvet bedspread, the
curtains are drawn. Her dresser holds her clothes,
her jewelry sits on top, next to pictures of
her and my father. Her things.
In the same building, in the same unit:
#313. Just me and her. It always was.

In California, chemo, radiation make her sick.
She is in her bedroom at the back of the house.
She cries, I try to comfort her. Her head hurts.
She is wearing a fuzzy white robe that smells like
her perfume.

In central Florida, her wheelchair is next to the bed.
She wakes crying, asking for my father.
I have to sort her meds, give her these pills:
Tegretol
Elavil
Megace
Lasix
Colace
Paxil
Zofran
Reglan
Compazine
Ativan
Dilaudid
Fentanyl.

©JEF 2007

...

"The wound is the place where the Light enters you."
--Rumi

...

My Parents, Who Are Crying

They drive across a vast, empty plane
that tilts back and forth
like a carnival ride.
They are driving while
all around them
shrieks and reels
the wide open universe,
the horrible, unending universe,
screaming, roaring,
so much empty space,
shimmering,
indifferent,
numbing.
They are small and
vulnerable like china dolls
as the maroon car
speeds on, buffeted by
wind and the terrain,
stalked by danger,
easy victims.
I only see them from the back.
Their bodies rock,
knocked about inside the cab,
their heads loll left to right,
right to left.
My father’s hands
frozen to the wheel,
mistrusting, hating no one
more than himself,
pretending not to
regret all the things
he never did;
my mother, immobile, resolute,
so full of bitterness and
rage that, if she could
pull herself apart, if she could
slice herself open with her
own fingernails, if she could
reach in and wrench her
heart out, beating, dripping,
she would:
they are crying about it all.
Where is the end?
Ssssshh. Keep driving.
Just look ahead.
Everything is going to be all right.

JEF 1993