Book of the Dead 10

No person ever loved me more than my Grandmother.
And I don’t mean that as something that lifts me up.
I mean that as a testament to the goodness of Grandma.

The depth of my love of steamed eggs, or alternatively, custard pie
Are mere substitutions for the depth of my love for Grandma.
But Grandma died while I was in Marine Corps boot camp in 1969.

Her seventh heart attack did her in and it mattered not to the Corps
How much I loved my Grandmother or how much she loved me;
I was not permitted leave during boot camp for this or any reason.

After, Grandma came to me in boot camp, though she didn’t bring custard pie.
Something prohibited me from climbing the rope on the obstacle course.
Despite my intent and will, I could climb up only about ten feet and stall.

And there hung I, between Heaven and the drill instructor,
Who promised unpleasant consequences if I came down before I went up.
Long minutes hanging in limbo before succumbing to the DI’s promise.

Eventually, through a trick of faith and some personal instruction,
My feet and hands learned the trick. I became more of a man and more of a Marine.
But the truth of my heart was, I asked Grandma to help and she did.

Long after the Marine Corps, after the war, I fell asleep driving home alone one night.
Of course, I don’t know if I slept a moment or a minute, I was jolted
awake by a strike (more than a nudge, less than a slap) in the small of my back.

Awake, aimed exactly for a cement bridge abutment on the freeway,
Probably about a half-second before impact,
Grandma’s dusting powder scent filled the air in the car.

There is more to say here but I will leave it between Grandma and me.

With age, things change:
Skin thins as if by evaporation.
Gums recede.
Color leaves the hair.
The skeleton shrinks
In size and density.
We are gradually less.

At the end, we cease,
As far as we know,
In this corporeal world.
We set aside our bodies,
Like last year’s model.
We set aside physical interaction.

But that is all obfuscation.
It is a trick of language to say
We did something
And then say We don’t do something.

For the dead, there is still so much to do.

There is the going away,
Likened to some journey that changes us.
And if we go away,
We must be going to some place.
Another place, not like this place.
For what good is an afterlife,
If it is merely another iteration of this life?
Why go to all the bother of aging and dying
Just to wake up in another here?

There are always tests to see if the dead are worthy.

Ancient Egyptians had Ma’at,
Simultaneously Justice and Truth,
And Goddess.
If the heart of the dead
Balanced on a scale against her feather,
The dead could pass to the afterlife.
If it did not, the dead received utter obliteration.
It was all about the state of the heart.

Hebrews, Christians and Muslims
all measure the good of the heart
And promise obliteration if there is not enough.

Today, as a cultural species, we don’t need religion
to practice the concept of obliteration.
We begin before physical death.
The soon-to-die begin to lose autonomy.
It happens as if by evaporation,
The value of a full person evaporates.
We take their positions.
We take their possessions.
We take their permissions.
Once they actually cease,
There is so little change in the world.
It’s like they were always a memory.