Doorways

As a little girl (about seven years old) I once asked my mom how deep a grave was. I remember the look in her eyes as she stared at me confused before saying, “About as deep as a doorway is high.”

From that day on every time I passed through a doorway I thought about passing through death, damp ground, maggots and a rotting coffin. Holding my breath until the images faded and the doorway disappeared. I associated passageways with the end of all things, which was kind of ironic. I felt inferior passing through a threshold, because I knew I wasn’t untouchable... Just like my best friend; and she was only... fuuuuck can’t even remember how old we were when she died, ten maybe?

But what I do remember is how I struggled to breathe at night in my bed when the lights went out. The air became too heavy for my chest. How the earth started spinning the day she died and how I’m still waiting for it to stop. There was a crushing pain splintering my chest as the heavy stones crashed onto her coffin. Somehow, with every ragged breath I took she became part of a doorway that I couldn’t pass through. For months I wanted to run to her grave, to start digging until I could reach her coffin. To shake her awake, but I never made it past our house’s threshold. Entryways scared me to death – excuse the pun – and now so many years after I still think about rotting ground and unfinished good-byes every time I pass through a doorway.

Right after her death I became angry at everything in the world. I was subdued in my rage, imagining myself dying, being hit by a truck, a train, kidnapped, my broken body found in a ditch. For me, life became passing through one doorway to another...

But maybe that is what life is all about, making it from one hard part to another.