Where are the Trumpets

Where are the Trumpets

Our Father who art in Heaven…don’t let the haze of the fading day blind you from the sadness before us …On earth as it is in Heaven…show us some evidence of heavenly mercy, for all I see is pain and suffering…But deliver us from Evil…what greater evil is there then to allow senseless suffering…, and so went my muted interruption of the prayers so solemnly delivered by his family friends who surrounded him and then dutifully withdrew with the usual finality of Amen, Amen.

Though they are few, there are still those who are enriched by that which they give, and thus credited, they parted with the knowledge and pride of having oiled the gates of Heaven. But he would refuse them their due by laying continued claim to the soil he tilled all his life and refusing to advance, opting instead to anchor himself by a tethered rope to a broken life. His effort, however, was passive at best. He was wholly unresponsive, but for an incidental raising of his left hand in the direction of his head, to which they quickly laid claim as an attempt to do, what every good Catholic must at the delivery of Amen, to cross himself. But they were hasty in their conclusion for no abiding Catholic, and most certainly not one that is right-handed, would cross himself on the side of the condemned. That was, nonetheless, the last limb movement we witnessed, though this tentative calm would prove as fragile as he.

Less than one hour has expired on the ticking clock and the formidable intensity in the room is contained only by that most powerful of shields, silence, as we watch him degenerate violently before our eyes. The clock will tick for six more hours before we wind it once again. A six hour sprint to death, though I am convinced his body thinks otherwise, or it would not command such final intensity, as we shall come to describe, but rather subside in resignation, decease in final surrender, but it fights on and we cannot help him, we are left to assess the injury, with partially veiled eyes, for it is in our nature to shield our eyes from the brightness of the sun and other matters we cannot control. And the clock ticks on…

What incredible violence he has come to endure. He is being brutally beaten into submission. Each sinking blow is viciously delivered and uncompromisingly received, through the inadequate armor of cotton and wool, deep within the softness of his shallow belly, forcing precious air from his ailing lungs and, with lunging effort, he labors to recaptured it. He lies on his right side, his bony knees slightly raised towards his sunken chest, his frail arms lay ineffectively by him, in an act of vulnerable indifference. He is unresponsively enduring continued attacks upon the brittle frailty of his person. Raise your hands over your ears John, tuck your knees to your chest, John, submit, submit, how much pain can you endure John, cry uncle John, cry uncle; if he were conscious these are the words we would speak to him, these are the commands we would urge with our quivering voices.

His body, once harboring that uncommon strength and unfettered determination reserved for a man raised on the land and accustomed to the heat of the sun and the sharpness of the rain, is now diminished beyond recognition, its condition unsuccessfully masked by the layered blankets and sheets upon him. His capacity has all but withered away, but his body will have none of it. How wantonly the body wants to live that it seeks hope where there is none. Where the strength of the lungs is failing and they can no longer draw in that life giving fuel, the body commissions the remaining strength of its infantry, the legs and the shoulders and even the fingers and toes are put into action, each weighed down by the heaviness of dying, yet contracting and releasing with such wanton strength, and with the precision of a well trained regiment, that the body is made to heave with regularity from its final bed as it attacks, like a lunging dog, the air it can no longer entice. His brittle body jolts with conformity, as it collapses and expands beneath the form-fitting sheets, as if he were, himself, a faded paper bag at the mouth of a hyperventilating invalid; Life, how sweet thou art.

The infantry is rapidly diminishing and it can no longer hold back this unwelcome assailant. A coldness has come to his fingers and toes and it is quickly rising to the core of his paper like body. What painful contradiction we see before our eyes, his body is like paper, yet it bears the weight of granite. In a defiant attempt to unveil our eyes we venture to control that which we cannot, and we pile blankets on him, but fail to keep him warm - though we may close our eyes, the sun keeps shining, and his bony knees are still traceable under all of these covers. His lungs are filling with fluid, and he has been foaming at the mouth for a short time now, he is drowning from the inside-out. Its gates are oiled, and Heaven waits for no-one.

The last and decisive battle has come to pass at the doorway of life, and his throat and neck collapse and expand in their final valiant attempt to draw in one last breath. The force is so great that I can see the skeletal structure of his neck, no longer protected by the cover of muscle that once supported the weight of a proud head, as it expands and collapses with such force that the body, though having now all but failed, continues to heave as it attempts to draw the mouth nearer to the escaping air. There is silence but for the hollowness of the air as it is ravaged, with frail regularity, into his lungs and then expelled with great force, resonating like the sputters of a failing engine, backfiring in an echo chamber. And we know he is in his final moments, though no one will dare speak it, for even the Bolsheviks, in the coldness of their battlefield, were able to fend-off the mighty armies of France, and eternal hope remains the fuel of the living, even of those living in their final moments – death must come as a surprise, even to he who has already taken his last breath.

We sit and stand in various forms of weakened posture as the echo of his breathing pierces each one of us to the core, for the sound of human suffering has the power to surpass the ear and fill, with great emptiness, that area of our body that we can each locate with ease, below the sternum and above the stomach, which our nature has held in reserve for such weighty deposit. Periodically the nervous cough of his wife, or the movement of a chair, breaks the seemingly impenetrable connection between his breathing and our being, and collectively we turn our heads towards the intruding noise, but only momentarily, for the hollow beating of his breath, like the throb of a jungle drum, is much too entrancing and, in an act of unrehearsed choreography, we reconnect with the breathing – there is only the breathing.

He has been reduced to breathing, and that too will come to pass. Though we don’t speak it, we are all keeping time with the ticking clock, listening attentively for that certain change in tempo, the slowing in rhythm we know must come before the music fades and the audience rises silently, wiping away a tear of sentiment and bowing their heads in recognition of the effort. The conductor’s unyielding wand, however, is raised high over his head in shaking intensity and the fading musician has been resonating Staccato Molto Crescendo beyond that that any orchestra can reasonably sustain and any audience can reasonably endure, and we know it must fade, and we start to anticipate the limits of the performer and the drawing of the curtains.

His assailant is not an invading murderer, but death itself. She has laid her offspring in his lungs, and though he battled Her valiantly for nearly one year, She would not be stopped, for when death tastes blood She is excited beyond sensibility, and She must consume you whole. Like a well practiced assailant the cancer has recently attacked the brain, the center from which his battle was organized and, over the last forty five days, it has progressively and systematically shut him down. First it shut down his left side, which had so effectively supported his lien when he rested, as a young boy, upon a shovel or pick, wiping from his brow the hard earned sweat of a fruitful day in the fields, and before he could learn to cope with it, it shut down his right side, which until recently, with only modest, but necessary assistance from the left, would plant the many roses and azaleas and other fruitful flowers, which he can no longer smell, upon those yards and public places he landscaped to help put food on the table. Soon thereafter it attacked his vision, taking from him the view of his children and his grandchildren and other gardens he had planted, and then his speech, followed by the loss of his ability to eat even the softest fruit of his Spring-time labor. He has been reduced to breath, there is only breath.

His immediate family is here, his wife, two sons, three daughters and two sons-in-law, of whom I am one; that’s me, with my back up against the wall. I fear I might fall to the ground if I am not supported by a disinterested party – this wall has been hardened by so much death and dying, it is unlikely to give way any time soon. This wall, uninvolved as it may be, has nonetheless taken care to distinguish between death and dying, for the two are not one. There is much more weight in dying than that which can be supported by the hand of a pallbearer. Death is in the past, and the past will always get lighter when diluted by time, but dying is now and the weight is overbearing.

We sit and watch, he should not be alone at a time like this. His wife strokes his head, his sons hold their own heads in fear of what is to come, and his daughters touch his hands and examine his feet with a sense of unrecognizing disbelief – a farmer’s feet are the essence of his measure, and these cannot be his feet. How futile we all feel, there is nothing we can do to help him but hope to give him reason to continue the fight, or at least for having tried. He must bear this weight alone, but at least he is surrounded by those he loved, at least his fight is witnessed by those who will always have cause to remember it – for what is the precise measurement of life, if its end is not witnessed? And we are thus given cause to take measure - unlike the worth of eggs and milk and other, lesser, consumables, we fail to assess the value of life, until it has expired, and there is little meat on his bones anymore.

I lean against the wall, John, John, can you hear me John, don’t be afraid, you won’t be alone, ask for Hortencia, Hortencia DeMelo, Hortencia Xavier DeMelo if you need to be more precise, her maiden name is Xavier, she is my grandmother and she will be by your side, you will see my grandfather there too, he will be with her, give them a big hug, please John, give them a big hug. Call her ‘nariz grande’ John, ‘big nose’ we always joked about her big nose, she will know we sent you if you call her ‘nariz grande’, we would call her big nose in Portuguese; oh how she would fuss and pretend to chase us and threaten to deliver a good spanking; oh how she loved it when we teased her. Call her ‘nariz grande’ John, don’t forget, she will know she is still in our hearts and she will know you go in our love. Tell her about the kids John, don’t forget to tell her about the kids. John, tell her about the kids. I must give the others some time with you John, I don’t expect you can hear us all at once, remember, ‘nariz grande’, we shall not forget you either John, we shall not forget you. These words are spoken only in my head, for there are others in the room, and even in times such as these, when our words are final, we do not speak them, for we are creatures easily embarrassed by the simple things we want to say. We all have sentiments we keep to our selves for fear they be diminished when divided by a number greater than one, and we do not speak what is in our hearts, surely the dying can read our thoughts, and there is only silence, there is only breathing. Oh, what silent disturbance goes on in this room, the hardened walls can barely contain it. God-dam, what complicated fools we can be, a dog will lick the lips of its dying mate and a praying mantis would devour hers entirely, but we carry on imaginary conversations in our heads and we repeat them to ourselves, and we put them down on paper, one hand to pen, and one hand to shield our thoughts.

Having exhausted my unvoiced conversation, I notice the shades are drawn back, they have been drawn back the whole time, but I only now notice it. The sun has faded and we need no longer shield our eyes. There is only darkness now;

Oh cruel grave night, why must you be so prompt,
Your face pressed against the window pane,
You wait in patient merriment, for you know full well these flickering candles, though they add gravity to the faces of the Saints they guard, cannot hold you at bay for long,
And he alone cannot fight you, for he is weak and frail,
Wherefore is daylight, for She has the power to dissipate darkness, and She shall force you from this room.
Oh powerful, all-consuming night, will you not show pity, and let these candles shine like the sun in their own ignorance, and let these paper Saints raise his spirit for one day more, for his wife needs him and his children want him, and he is only one to you, and you shall put us all to bed in good time.
Oh pitiful, shameful night, do not revel in your misguided glee, for God has eyes to see right through you, and he has come amongst us to cradle the spirit of his ailing son;

These words have come back to me in the clarity of night. They first came to me several weeks ago when I visited him in his final days at home, his bed surrounded by candle light, its radiance commanding the likes of Saint Francis and Saint Paul, and that leader of Saints, Saint Peter, and other Saints I did not recognize, whose paper depictions lay strewn amongst the room, with their silent eyes raised to heaven, as if showing him the way. And there he lay, until he was wrapped and delivered, Fragile, to this palliative bed. These words have come back to me now, sucked from my being with his last breath.

What noise has burst from this breathless silence.

The conductor has lowered his wand with determined sharpness and speed and the music has stopped, and the commotion in our heads has burst to the forefront, like a flash bomb in the darkness. And our hearts sink, even the walls are weakened, and we jump in unison to surround him, to touch him, to touch each other, to cry. Life, what are you but the sweet candy of Time, and though She may suck you lightly, as if you are the darkest of chocolates, she wears you down nonetheless.

He lays before us in an altered silence, a peaceful silence, a silence denoting the end of a struggle, a silence with no further fearful anticipation; no more bombs will go off on this battlefield, and we need not shrug and veil ourselves in this silence. And daylight will again break soon;

And He has raised him, whereupon he shall look on darkness with pity, and he shall smile on us forevermore,
Be gone worthless night, for you have lost the battle, and here we are in daylight, praising his life in God, for all eternity;

These concluding words came to me in this, more peaceful and subdued, silence. Ah, Silence, you are made of only one substance, yet you show yourself in varying forms; You are not but that great empty space between cause and effect, yet you come in many shapes, each so different from the other that we may be fooled into not recognizing you, and we may think our ears will shatter in your presence, though your presence alone guarantees the contrary. What great paradox you are, defined by what you are not, you bear the residue of that which caused you to be, yet you are best characterized by the anticipation of that which shall cause you to cease; which is why we feared you before he died, for you were cloaked with the color of death, and now we welcome you, for you deliver peace.

This silence is markedly different, but it is silence none the less, for though it differs in intensity, it does not differ in its void, Where are the trumpets? , I say to myself. It seems hardly fair, Where are the trumpets? A fruitful life has come to pass, and Where are the trumpets? We live, we laugh, we struggle, we fight, we live, we play, we ail, we cry, we laugh, we remember, we forget, we question, we live, we build, we move, we lay, we rise, we propagate, we pay, we give, we receive, we fight, we laugh, we live, we lose, we win, we fight, we fight, we cry, we ail, we build, we build, we fight, we laugh, we argue, we force, we persuade, we accept, we cry, we pray, we dream, we dream, we work, we swear, we read, we live, we write, we eat, we drink, we ail, we age, we cry, we live, we lose, we win, we fight, we live, we die - Where are the trumpets? In the end there is only silence, Where are the trumpets? In the end there is only loss, only subtraction, Where are the trumpets? What’s it all for? Where are the trumpets? Perhaps only he hears the trumpets, ‘nariz grande’, John, remember, ‘nariz grande’.

We sit motionless in this void, what now? We sit in an unshaped silence, each expecting more, we sit for an hour and there is no more. Then, as if commanded by the wail of a Calvary call, we are moved to action. Our lesson is reinforced - in times when reason fails us, we do what our bodies command, in times when the mind is preoccupied with examination, the body reverts to routine; and we start to clean the room. You get the pop cans and I will pile the newspapers into a neat stack, You collect the condolence cards into this hand-bag and I will arrange these flowers into a vase. The silence is broken by simple action, and thus defined; Life goes on, and, in our own way, with our impulsive actions, we proclaim this to be true, Move that chair so no-one trips on it, Do you want to pick up the kids this morning, or wait until after noon, and life goes on, I’ll wind the clock, and life goes on – I think I hear the trumpets. And we hold our outstretched hands over our brow, for the sun is also rising. Amen.