Tea for Two: The Gift of a Good Death

I’ve waited my whole life to give someone a good death.

Presence grows out of absence.

As I lay dying as a teenager, my family reacted like marionettes with their strings cut. Whatever animated them–fear, hope, concern, possibility–was mute and dead. I was dying but I was much more alive than the stiffs who surrounded me, people who loved me but who could not act on their love. 

Just as I lived the entirety of my fifteen years alone, I would also die alone, unpraised, uncomforted, unnamed.

So it is with a fierce energy, a tremendous passion, that I approach the sickness and death of others. What I was not given, I give in spades. I have the words, the actions, the daring. 

Descended from the cross of my own suffering, it is best not to cross me. 

I did not die; my fear died.

So I have boundless expertise in the simple and the overlooked. How to arrange a tiny plate to tempt a dying person to eat. How to arrange flowers and art and toys in ways that delight, that momentarily distract the mind from horrors.

Most importantly, presence. 

Presence that makes gross and terrifying things normal and acceptable.

Presence that finds laughter in desolation.

Presence, the most valuable commodity. Priceless. 

Ultimately, there is nothing but that: an exchange of uniqueness, a witnessing, a trade of you for me and me for you. Tea for two. And maybe a few sugar-free cookies.

Memorial and celebration. Lights soon to be extinguished. 

All we have in this tenuous passage. Momentary warmth and illumination.

Clarity and surrender. Presence returned to absence.

And loss. Great loss.

Presence. Me for you and you for me.