I had a passion for life, always have had it: you live it, or experience it, so I've learned; I needed to try almost everything that came to my mind, if possible"even look death in the face at nine-years old. I can't even remember when it started, this impulsiveness of mine, nor can I say it has stopped; no, not even at 58-years old; perhaps it is a lot of nonsense. 'Dang it all, that's the way it is,' I'd say, and go do it"and that's the way it was, like it or not: it was my first sight of death (in 1956 or was it 1957, I can't remember the exact year), and I shall not forget the moment when I followed Mrs. Larose, my elderly babysitter one afternoon, one summer to the morgue, when the police notified her that her separated husband had died of a heatstroke in a car; left in the car for two days, and alcohol over his breath. Here I stood in the police morgue, a little room, with a silent little group of dead people, corpses. I don't recall any windows in the room, all these bodies were laid out, covered like fish, this was my own sight of death, half death, I've yet to look it in the face: face to face. Then the moment came when the policeman pulled the white sheet away from her husbands face, to be identified, then I saw him: face to face, inches, or perhaps a few feet away. I was nine or ten years old, and death was odd to me, it was a bloated body, a terrifying body, discolored, not normal"this was death's first look into my young face. I had known him slightly, seen him a few items at Mrs. Larose's house, and talked to him. "Yes," that's Ed, my husband," said Mrs. Larose. My warm blooded insides, turned cold suddenly, I turned about and walked to the arch of the door, stood there a moment, it was like a winter night inside of me, in a summer afternoon. As far as her story goes, I did not know why they were separated, or if it was a divorce; I heard he was a womanizer, and alcoholic, that is to say, that was her side. I never know his side. Written at EP/Afternoon of 5/19/2006, Lima, Peru |
