A peony, fear and the splitting of an atom
First published on Liz’s Substack
I think about death like the splitting of the atom. When an atom bomb is dropped it releases a huge wave of energy. When a big star dies it creates a wave that can create new stars. Maybe even become a black hole, a thing so dense that nothing can escape from it. You are flung from your feet by it, objects are thrown from their usual places, everything is in need of righting. There is dust and injury. But so too there is this tremendous energy, like birth. I cut a peony yesterday and put it in a vase on my kitchen window shelf. I examined its leaves, they way their veins mimic our finger prints, or maybe the other way round. I remembered my Dad saying my sister was a cut flower when she was lying in the hospital. I’ve had the line from Mary Oliver’s poem The Summer Day rolling round and round in my head: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
I sat and admired my sister in the hospital, we joked about how she never sat still, never let us soothe and indulge her, she was always far too busy, far too capable for that. I sat and looked at her hair, the colours that went through it, her skin, her freckles, the rings on her fingers. I held her hand, something I probably hadn’t done since I was about 7 or 8 and I let myself take her in completely and from there came this explosion of love, devotion even, to her, her children, her causes. But the wave is still settling and I wake each spring morning with sorrow baked around my heart. The initial busy energy of death has been used up and now I’m having to get used to living with loss in the long term.
When I was around 11 years old I became suddenly and inexplicably terrified of dying. I would lie in my bed at night with a sinking feeling hitting my stomach every time I shut my eyes like the world’s most miserable rollercoaster. One night during this period of terror I was being looked after by my Nona (grandmother on Dad’s side). It needs to be said here that Nona was not your typical fluffy grandma, she was tough and cool and quite scary in an aloof way, regardless I was so terrified by my fear of death, (what would it look like, how would it feel, would I know? Is there an afterlife?) That I swung out of bed and padded out into the corridor where I found her on the way to have a cigarette. I can’t remember the exact question I asked or the exact answer I got but my Nona didn’t soothe or indulge my fear, she shrugged her shoulders and said “that’s death, it’ll happen to us all” and this realism, this stoicism was just the antidote for my overflowing fear. I carried this attitude into my adult life, death is part of life, I am going to die, we are all fragile creatures roaming this planet on our way to death. Now, I know some people really can’t hack this, and trust me I have a poor read on whether or not this kind of chat is party talk, but to my mind, why not? I think it can only do us and the planet harm to live as if we are invincible and therefore it can only do us good to remember that we’re here for the briefest moment, life is inutterably precious and can be full of worth and meaning. Maybe though if we thought we’d have to stay here on planet Earth longer then we might look after the place better. So, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”