Starting point
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This year I have lived as long without you as with you I am 12 What to do with this random thought Another thought lives as a question Had you known why did you leave no instructions But then it didn’t occur to you Did you spend those last months trying to stay alive Or did you not know until there was no energy for yourself much less for a technical manual for my life Sometimes they didn’t tell people then They thought it would be discouraging pointless demoralizing What about those left behind small children living the life sentence of your death This year another death my grandma she researched on her own figured it out at diagnosis told her kids all adult by then that just a year remained No one told me
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This year I have lived twice as long without you as with you I am 18 What to do with this now less random thought I am about to graduate high school You finished only eighth grade would you know what to say to me Would you offer advice Would I take it Word is you only expected that I would marry have children that’s all women did could do should do in your view I suppose Maybe twelve years more might have made room for other possibilities or perhaps not there’s no way to know Can I decide how you might have felt manufacture support for my position causing such confusion in the family Another death my grandpa now was this his own random thought for how to spend a day or did he plan in advance
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This year I will have lived three times as long without you as with you I am 24 What to do with this now habitual thought at multiples of six I catch myself wondering who might die this year I look at those others searching for clues I escape overseas again to study live work Just last year returned from elsewhere where I studied lived worked Mama is not happy I see it in her faraway eyes when she’s lost in thought lost in life hiding it while donning her cloak of excitement for me Days after leaving last time she was in hospital Definitely not my fault but still I lived the guilt for not being there for living my life while not knowing hers No one thought to tell me not entirely true actually they decided not to feeling the weight of a seeming curse sparing me they thought Here’s a secret about secrets they do come out and decisions need explanations It would be easier if she had someone easier for her easier for me perhaps the hole I leave would not gape so perhaps the guilt I feel would not gnaw at me Even if no one dies innocence died long ago death hangs like a spectre
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This year I will have lived four times as long without you as with you I am 30 I am adult or should be that’s what the numbers say This thought tugs at me again and again if I should live so long which is up for debate I can’t find how to live my life Except gathering friends who’ve also lost someone usually in their teens I am like flypaper When you were my age you were working in a doctor’s office which makes no sense to me until I find the business diploma which also makes no sense to me Mama knows little when asked she just has this paper which I read again and again since when you were my age you two hadn’t met yet Mama was a waitress then dating a guy plucked away caught in a war wanting more than she could offer then making room for me as a later possibility But when Mama was my age she was rocking me in her arms her 1 month old and you were still here worrying if bringing me here into a messy world was the thing to do this thing already done In your worry for the world for me in it did you see your own future or lack thereof working at the brewery farmhand to doctor’s office to the ice plant who can make it make sense By the time there are questions I have no one to give answers they are buried with you So I keep going yet another town one more school chasing a future caught in a messy present watching it all drain away someone else pulling the plug each day that passes each day of staying each day of saying nothing makes explanation less possible his word my life sit on tilting scales This year feels like I am dying
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This year I will have lived five times as long without you as with you I am 36 Will no one rid of me this meddlesome thought carried country to country place to place what to make of this life of constant false starts a life I think you would not understand no marriage no kids nothing expected But squint a little and there it is when you were my age your life was similar no wife no kids nothing to suggest them just no traveling to escape Am I tracing your path subconsciously this is a new thought - how random to be mirroring someone unknown in ways unimaginably different yet all the same But when my mom was my age she was a widow with two small kids and no income who’s counting her story besides me I know only that that’s not the life I want a thing I say once to her in those flailing years regretting instantly the words that snuck out hating the brain that let them escape Coin toss: grief or love decision or not we die by inches each of us always
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This year I will have lived six times as long without you as with you I am 42 What to make of these patterns of our lives interweaving marriage a baby (two for you) came to us both late My whole life I’ve thought you wouldn’t understand now I think you might have the only one who could no one else seems to I struggle with the fear that I will exit this life before my child is adult fight it daily Fear that age I was when you left will come to her and I too may be gone because I know a secret Although this time is spent thinking about her preparing for her being with her it is not enough if I disappear she will forget me (I know because I did you) but would she forgive me (I hope because I did you) When you were my age you did not know how quickly it would end you had no reason to even believe it might but I know differently living under a dark cloud at this happy time doctors weaving through my life poking prodding with the rhythm of their numbers they too are counting time this invisible math this inescapable math this pounding driving beat
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This year I will have lived seven times as long without you as with you I am 48 I need to stop these thoughts but don’t know how It’s not healthy to be elsewhere in this land of what if dreading this next year When you were my age you had just one year left but didn’t know it I feel my way through that space blindly eyes wide open But big surprise while worrying this year away dreading my way to the next Mama leaves me unprepared I have now lost almost everyone who matters A friend says it is time to feel free no one stands now between me and the end I have never felt less free ////// ////// ////// ////// ////// ////// ////// ////// / 48 then 49 and then I will have lived longer than you no more comparison I’ll have to write my own life I have to right my own life She shouldn’t spend this life her life counting I want her free of that infernal need this curse that plays as backbeat I want to give the answers before she thinks of the questions I want for her more real memories not a yardstick to measure to always miss the mark to always come up short to find herself wanting and wanting and wanting This inexorable pulse this too loud count pounding pounding