Oh No, Not Yet

By Emmanuelle

There is a topic that this writer would rather not write about. Though she knows, she would have to get around to doing it sometime; but not now, oh no, not yet.

Oh well. That sometime is here.

Feelings readers of the Sunday Punch, hard copy or on line, had asked one time or another, why this sordid fascination with what is dark in life. And with death. Especially with death.

Typically, she has this one and only answer: when you and I shall have reached a certain point in our relationship, when “you” and “I” cease to be, and “us” becomes the resulting entity, then and only then will I tell you the why and the how. Actually, she really means to say: na-ah.

Then this writer happened to have a serious talk with the SP publisher-editor regarding her latest encounter with the dark. He urged her to share this with her readers; but for him, a different reason – that the readers may think twice before rushing towards the dark.

The fact that this talk occurred a month and a half ago speaks volumes. Does it have to take that long to transfer images and feelings from one’s very private physique to the very public medium of print on paper or screen? The difficulty, the reluctance, the hesitation are obvious.

She doesn’t call it the dark. It is the darkling. Darklings, for these encounters count once too many. Dark is too gloomily awesome, too sweeping, too enveloping. Better is the darkling. It sounds not too threatening, like a place where one can still flee through gates agape, where its dark angels seem not to loom so frighteningly as creepy swooping shadows. Darklings lanti.

When one had a major organic system completely extracted to hopefully get rid of the big C, when one has diabetes for years, and an enlarged heart to boot a damaged body; when one’s systolic plunge to 70, 60, 50 and still down it goes with its paired diastolic even going low, lower. And the heart bumps loud then skips then does a twiddle-tick, then goes through the uneven cycle all over again – one is in trouble.

And when one is a writer who smokes one to two packs of a leading brand of  Class A fliptop cigarettes; who doesn’t distinguish night from day when the writing bug bites; who flits from mountain to plain to sea as if in possession of a god’s winged feet – that one is definitely in greater trouble.

It happened at seven in the evening on the first week of June at a pizza parlor where artists and professors and yuppies congregate. Just after her first tiny bite of a volatile vegetarian selection, she stood up, said she couldn’t breathe, then dropped down the floor unconscious.

For the first few minutes, they tried to revive her. Then they rushed her to the hospital. Hospitals. Seven to twelve midnight in a government place. Then to a private one.

Two cardiologists, five resident physicians, countless ECGs, x-ray, injections, IVs later – a diagnosis at last. Though this writer’s heart is too big for her and everybody’s comfort, it chooses to beat for life.

All are curious – family, friends, fellow-writers, the publisher-editor. How was it? How did it feel?

The first few minutes of oblivion were the most crucial. It was not heaven; it was not hell. There was no light; there was no music. There were no angels; there was no long-departed beloved to reach forth a welcoming hand.

To the dark, to the darkling. Either way, it was to nothingness. One crossed from panicky fear to none; from pain to none; from sounds to none; from thinking to not. It was the complete absence of everything; or it was the total presence of nothing.

One moment you exist; the next, you do not. You are not lost; you are just gone.

Then a beloved’s familiar voice crosses over into the dark, calling your name in a chatting, chanting familiar way – repeatedly, monotonously. When one loves or is loved that much, one simply lets go of oblivion. One swims through the waterless dark or darkling towards the sound of that voice. One swims by rows and rows of quiet people standing singly, as couples or in groups, watching, waiting for what, for whom? One must burst through the gate still agape.

And the writer finally breathes air. She breathes in, too, the smell of her sweat, her vomit, the body that had gone out of her control. The panic, the fear, the pain, the thoughts, the sounds – these are all back in droves of sweet vengeance.

Yup, life is too much. And too beautiful to let go Ah, not now, not yet.      

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