THE QUESTION OF DEATH Love & Death: Greatest Hits, with Joan Logghe & Miriam Sagan Renée Gregorio At 55, what do I long for?—not exactly the checkout man at Albertson's who gives me my first senior discount & I try to dispute it, ask: "How old does one have to be?" He answers: "55." He didn't even ask for identification, simply knew I'd crossed that threshold. But this crossing-over, where does it lead? Do I write a poem about death, or do I sit down at last and write my will? If I practice a certain fullness of the mind, where does that take my body? If I offer myself and no one comes, how would I stand for refusal? In death, is there at last a quieting of the questions? Today, I've been married 14 years. I used to think this a kind of dying, feared sameness and dailiness, the dependable. Now I use a wooden stick to help me down the mountain, reach for another's hand when crossing a rough stream, no longer get feisty when he calls me his wife. Day after day, another sunset. I don't know how to write about my own death, hear the Hindu man in the train compartment saying "It is written," although he was talking about our meeting and parting and meeting again. Yeah, it is written, this coming and going, this returning. Maybe I'll come back as a desert apache plume, a clump of seagrass in the dunes of Provincetown, the fog that envelopes and releases the hills of Big Sur, a river that slowly cuts its way through rock, or a human who has certainty rather than questions. I'm too busy being born to die, and anyway death will come. It will be quiet and rigorous and ask something of me I had not thought to ask myself. ©2011 Renée Gregorio