I Am Persephone’s Child

 

I. The road

She lay flat on the pavement, warm blood pooling like thick, red Kool-Aid beneath her head.

I stood, frozen, my brain somersaulting back in time: emerging from the thick woods, the twilit road, the rush of a car, my shrill call for her to come, the screech and thud.

Nikki’s breath rasped against bared teeth. I dropped Star’s reins and rushed to her. I kneeled beside her. She whimpered. I put my hand on her furry coat, stroking its thick, dense warmth. Her tail thwacked once, twice, three times against the warm road.

Then nothing.

My head sank to meet hers, and I wept.

Interlude: Highway to hell

Dante loved Beatrice.

It was an unusual love. They met briefly at her family’s estate when she was eight years old and Dante nine. The budding poet was entranced by Beatrice’s bright eyes, kindness, and presence. “From that time forward, Love quite governed my soul,” Dante wrote. But their love was intangible, untouchable. They never walked, talked, or held hands. When they came of age, they each married other people.

The Florentine statesman/poet continued to love and worship the gentle, ethereal Beatrice from afar. It was an idealized love — and a bookish one.

Almost all of Dante’s writing was inspired by Beatrice. And when she died suddenly at age 24, Dante was distraught.

In “The Inferno,” Dante recalls when grief roughly shoved him off his path:

Midway through life’s journey
I woke to find myself in a darkened wood,
Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.

In The Divine Comedy, Dante pursues his beloved Beatrice through Hell and Purgatory before finally finding her in Heaven. It’s a twisting, tortuous tale, one that any grieving person has traveled.

Grief’s a confusing pathway. It winds and wanders. It zigs and zags. It pulls us from sun into shade. The “right road” is never found again.

Grief sets us on an unfamiliar journey. Our former map is useless; we no longer navigate by what we once knew, what we once believed, what we once held true. That geography is gone. That road dead-ends.

The new path unfolds. It weaves between life and death. It intersects. It crosses. It doubles back.

It takes us where we never thought we’d be until we find ourselves there. We walk on, trusting our hearts will find the way.

II. The song

It’s the sounds of my mother’s dying that echo in my mind:

a whoosh of automatic E.R. doors
the metal scrape of a chair across cold tile
clank of a clipboard
rubbery slide of dangling IV bags
hushed voices lapping the wall
the pull and suck of pumping blood
liquid spritz of a shot syringe
the rustle of a turned page
her ripped, ragged breath
my whisper: I don’t want you to leave
hers: I don’t want to die
sobs, muffled
silence

Dying is so long and so quick.

Her death: 6 months from start to finish. It was forever. It was a single millisecond.

At first, time tumbled like a waterfall, each second swirling toward the next, crashing into a crescendo as the multitude of minutes cascaded down, down, down.

As the waters settled, a diagnosis: pancreatic cancer. A rush of panic. Denial. Anger. Sadness. Fighting. Acceptance.

“I want to go home,” my mother told us from her hospital bed. “I want my blanket. I want to sit by my fire. I want to hear the grandkids play. I want to sleep in my own bed.”

So we took her home to die.

Time changed. The hours stuck like molasses on the bedroom walls. At night, they dripped from the ceiling: slow, sticky, sludgy. The clock froze, its hands glued to a round, rusting face.

My mother’s breathing slowed. Her voice rasped. Lesions sprouted like red roses on her shrinking white skin.

Watching her, listening to that breathy rasp, I recalled the times she embarrassed my child-self in church when she opened her mouth to sing. Loud, liquid, lingering, her voice soared like sparrows out and over the pews. People turned to see. I inched away, pretending not to hear.

My mother opened her eyes.

“Read Psalm 91 again,” she said.

I opened her Bible and began.

Surely he will save you
from the fowler’s snare
and from the deadly pestilence.

I paused to study her closed, sunken eyes, her jutting cheekbones.

“Keep reading,” she said.

You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.

“Praise Jesus,” she breathed.

I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honor him.
With long life I will satisfy him

I stopped. Her breath beat against the window. Loud angel wings crashed against a violet sky.

* * * * * * * * *

A house of death is not a silent one.

Sounds: tick tock tick whoosh slip pat pat pat scrape push breathe catch gargle gargle hold exhale rattle rattle rattle stop whisper shout buzz hummmmmmmm

The hours stuck to the walls.

Before she died, my mother fell into a coma.

We came up with that vernacular to comfort ourselves: to fall into a coma. It sounds easy, to fall. It sounds effortless. Passive. But how do we know? Maybe she didn’t fall. Maybe she leapt. Maybe she dove, face forward, facing infinity with a smile — or a sneer. Maybe she embraced oblivion. Perhaps it was a declaration of defiance. An act of war. Maybe she dove, silently screaming as she submerged.

Maybe she sang.

Interlude: A thousand may fall

Psalms originate from the Greek psalmos, meaning “songs sung to a harp.”

The psalms are the perhaps the best-loved book of the Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible. They are, simply, a collection of songs meant to be sung in praise, thanksgiving, celebration, or lament. Composed over centuries, the psalms number 150.

Psalm 91 is a Top-40 hit in the psalmic playlist. Also known by its Latin name, “Qui habitat,” it is read, sung, and evoked as a psalm of protection during times of challenge and hardship. Psalm 91 is popularly called the Soldier’s Psalm, and was widely distributed and “massively” read during World War I to inspire and uphold troop morale. It’s since traveled to other battlefields, from Vietnam to Iraq.

91 promises protection from an ocean of hardship: plague, pestilence, enemies, onslaught:

A thousand may fall at your side,
And ten thousand at your right hand;
But it shall not come near you.

Moses himself may have written Psalm 91.

After wandering the desert for 40 years, Moses built a holy Tabernacle. Entering it, he was surrounded by a divine cloud that swept him up and over Mount Sinai. Moses composed the psalm as he soared.

Floating above the earth, he stopped mid-air. Suspended between earth and sky, he occupied the liminal space of the in-between. Appropriately, Moses sang.

Songs help us navigate life’s in-between spots, the moments that come and go, the events that start and stop, the people that appear and disappear. Songs give music to life’s liminal spaces: birth, celebration, marriage, ritual, separation, reunion, and death. Such liminal moments of change are bolstered by poetry, words, music, song.

Liminal moments are moments of transition. They shape us. They compel us. They have the power to change us.

Liminality is standing at a threshold while wondering what’s on the other side. Liminality is pausing, one hand opening the door, the selfsame hand also shutting it.

Liminality is peering into a distance shrouded with fog.

Liminality is being in a world where your someone is missing. You live in the world of before and you live in the world of after. There is some satisfaction in both worlds but there is never complete satisfaction in either.

You are caught, enveloped in mist, shrouded by clouds, floating above. They are gone. They are missing. They’re not coming back. You’re suspended in grief’s web, dangling in a living coma.

But hush. Close your eyes. Open your ears: hear the harp’s thrum. Taste the fog on your lips. Feel the words of song. Listen to the psalmist.

Sing.

III. The return

My son came home to die.

I didn’t know it at the time. It seemed a good thing, his return. His coming back. Prodigal son that he was, I welcomed him with open arms.

Roman had spent his teen years struggling. He struggled with school. Teachers. Authority. He struggled against rules. Schoolwork. Expectations. He struggled with ADHD. Depression. Angst. He struggled with alcohol. Partying. Drugs.

At 15, I sent him away. With two young children in the house, I couldn’t handle the midnight searches, the alcohol-fueled arguments, the drug-dealing on his little sister’s phone. It was too much. I buckled under the concrete weight of his defiance.

I sent him to Seattle to live with his dad.

He did no better there. Water seeks its own level. He found new schools to scorn. Birds of a feather stick together. He found new and troubled friends. If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. His addiction deepened. It’s always darkest before the dawn.

“Come home,” I begged.

“Nah, Mom, I gotta hustle,” he’d say.

“Come home,” I asked.

“I’m just chillin’ in the 206,” he said.

“Come home,” I pleaded.

One day, broken, battered, crashing off a cocaine high, forehead stitched and crusted with blood, he fell silent.

Then: “Okay.”

Joy does not describe the celestial beams that shone the September day his beat-up 1993 Civic snorted up our concrete drive. I wrapped my arms around his muscled chest. I felt his heart beat strong against my cheek.

“Alright, alright,” he said, brushing me off. He flicked his long hair out of his eyes. “Don’t mess up my shirt.” His laugh rolled like glass pebbles into the clear September air.

He was home. My boy was home. He had returned. And everything would be fine.

I did all the things you do for a prodigal son.

I fed him. Cleaned his room. Washed and folded his laundry. We rearranged his furniture. We bought new shirts, jeans, socks. I stashed his favorite snacks. We sat on the couch and Netflixed “The Color Purple.”

“You sure you want to watch this?” I asked.

“Yahhh,” he drawled. “I know you like this nerdy stuff.”

Later that week, we went to the local college to enroll him in classes. He smiled a brilliant smile for his student ID. He posted on his Facebook page: Imma go back to skool! (223 girls liked it.)

And he did. Roman got himself up. He drove to classes. He took quizzes. He took notes. He struggled with homework.

He yelled up the stairs: “Can you call the doc? I gotta get some Ritalin. You know: for focus.”

I didn’t take that as a warning.

A week later, he came into the kitchen. I’m going out, he said. Who with? I asked. Jess J, he said. I nodded okay.

I was in bed when I heard the thunk and screech of his car in the drive. I rolled over to see the clock. Only midnight. Good boy, I smiled. He’s home by midnight.

But for Roman, that midnight was endless.

He never woke. Not the next morning. Or the one after that. He’ll never wake again.

Whatever he took that night killed him. The alcohol numbed his limbs. The Xanax relaxed his mind. The Methadone compressed his lungs. The bennies stopped his heart.

Like Endymion, Roman found perpetual slumber. Like Endymion, he had perpetual youth. Like Endymion, he simply fell asleep forever.

And I woke to my never-ending nightmare.

Epilogue: Persephone’s child

Persephone. In Greek mythology, she wears a dark crown: Queen of the Dead.

Persephone is bride to Hades, Lord King of Death. But she wasn’t always queen. In brighter days, Persephone was a maiden frolicking with her friends, collecting flowers and stringing chains of daisies into a tiara befitting a child of gods (her father, Zeus, her mother, Demeter).

But Hades had other plans. Struck by Cupid’s arrow, he noticed his beautiful niece (I know — ew, those incestuous gods) scattering flower petals, her long hair flowing in the sun. He whipped his horses until foam streaked their sides. Racing toward the meadow, he scooped her into his dark chariot, spiriting Persephone into a crevasse and deep, deep, deep down into the rusty bowels of hell. Her shriek could be heard for miles:

The peaks of mountains resounded, as did the depths of the sea, with her immortal voice.

Her mother grieved, thinking her child lost or dead. Demeter sighed and cried, filling her soul with the blackest despair. She wouldn’t eat or drink. Her heart yearned only for her daughter.

Not once did she take of ambrosia and nectar, sweet to drink, in her grief, nor did she bathe her skin in water.
…
She sat in the shade, under the thick growth of an olive tree,looking like an old woman who had lived through many years…
— Homeric Hymn to Demeter, translated by G.Nagy

Demeter suffered from akhos, a deep, divining grief that drove her to anger, then rage. The goddess of crops refused to let the earth to grow or allow the sky to rain. A famine fell across the land. The people suffered, starved, died.

Then, she discovered her beloved girl was still alive, held captive by Hades.

“I want her back,” Demeter told Zeus, who nodded. But Persephone had already eaten 3 “honey sweet” pomegranate seeds that Hades had enticed her to eat. The rule: once you eat in hell, you forever eat in hell (there’s no takeout).

A stand-off: Demeter vs. Hades. Two stubborn gods, back to back. To end it, Zeus ordained Persephone to spend the growing seasons with her mother but to return to her hellish husband during winter’s cold embrace. Thus, the fragrant flowers emerging and blooming during spring show Persephone has reunited with Demeter. When they wither and die, the autumn calls her back to Hades and to hell.

Like Persephone, I’ve also been kidnapped by Hades, whisked away to his dark kingdom, held in a cavern of damp sorrow, ravished nightly by his hell-power.

I am Persephone’s child, my life stolen away, kidnapped, stripped by death himself. Like her, I long to return to life. Like her, I am reclaimed by death, day after day, hour by hour, season after season.

Like Persephone, I fear fall. I despise autumn’s cold messengers. The chilling air, the turning leaves, the withering stems — these taste of destruction. These smell like death. These sing of my child, lost and beyond my reach, his body cold, his heart long-stopped.

Persephone and me. Both of us sorrowing in disparate worlds. Both of us sad and disconsolate. Both of us wanting something we can never, ever have.

But Persephone is stuck in a story. Mythic queen, she can only be dreamed into life. I’m in the real thing. I’m in this life. I’m in akhos. I’m in grief. I’m in liminal limbo, endlessly caught, endlessly snared, endlessly enmeshed between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

I occupy space both in the here and the hereafter. My heart pains in both places. My soul is torn in two. My days are an eternal wanting:

Wanting forgiveness. Wanting resurrection. Wanting redemption.

Eternally wanting the return of my boy.

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Previously Published on medium

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Photo credit: iStock

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