Editing Eulogies

The words of the poem stared at me from the desktop of my computer. Staring
back at it, I felt another twinge of anger in my chest. Minimizing it, I
pulled up my search results for a flight leaving the next day. I was waiting
to get a call about whether to book the flight, but I was growing impatient.
Picking up my cell, I started to dial, until my sister’s name interrupted me as
it flashed across the screen.


“How is she?” I answered.


“Stable,” Brooke instantly responded. “They said making it through the night
would be the hardest. Since she went straight to surgery, they undid a lot of
the damage.”


“Ok, should I come?”


“No, Ellie, it’s fine. I’ll let you know if you should, but for now she’s in
a medicated induced coma. There’s no point for you to be here.”


“Fuck, Brooke, there is a point. I want to be there—“


"Ella,” my sister interrupted. “There is nothing for you to do here. John’s
here, Alex’s here, Nelson’s here. I’ll call you when she wakes up.”
With that, the phone went dead. My sister’s irritation with me was confusing.


I wasn’t trying to be dramatic, I was just scared. Glancing back at the poem, I
paused at four lines.


"And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveler between life and death."


It seemed surreal that my first instinct had been to pull up that poem: an
eighteen year old preparing a eulogy for her mother’s possible funeral. I was
being dramatic, and I was scared. The small voice that had been nagging at me
was working its way into the front of my mind. I had spent the better half of
that year hating my mother, and that small voice was uttering a thought that
the Catholic in me guiltily pushed away. I had wished she wouldn’t survive the
night.


I moved over to my bed to lie down, stretching my arms above my head while I
thoughtfully played with my hair. Closing my eyes, a barrage of thoughts and
memories cascaded into my head. As always, they began with a startling phone
call.