With thanks ...

and a word or two about my memoir, which is my life, and the question: "is all for naught?"

I was feeling like I had nothing to say. I was feeling like all was lost. I was feeling like game over. I was feeling like the expression on Tyg’s face.

But I’ve had a few new subscribers over the past month, and that offers me, if not exactly hope, at least some motivating discomfort. A desire to respond. To find something to say. To admit that I’ve been, somehow, found. To remain, ahem, in the game?

Here are the facts. I turned 75 in February. I’ve stopped looking for an agent for my memoir, and have been sending it out to independent presses instead. I’ve had the memoir rejected 30 times over the past two years. Currently it is still out at 16 presses. Some of these are contests, others are open reading periods. I’ve had two essays from the memoir published (“Before Roe,” at Pleiades Magazine, and “Minnie Bruce Pratt Saved My Life,” at The Gay and Lesbian Review); but I’ve had more than 60 rejections of two other essays, “BFF,” and “Unlucky in Love.” I’ve received a few nice comments about the memoir and about the essays, for which I am thankful.

A friend was recently telling me about how things were going in her life. She has the girlfriend and is happy with the classes she is teaching at “x” University. She likes her students. She likes the community. But she has some anxiety about whether she is “where she should be” at her age, which is under 40. Is she on the right track? And given the current “situation” (explanation not needed, we’re talking about a university) will she be able to achieve her goals? Seriously, is all for naught? Maybe you can empathize; I know I can.

I said what I thought might be helpful; I talked about how long a writer might labor, how far she may need to travel, to write a story that eventually appears in the New Yorker, and how many times prize-winning novels are rejected and trashed and rewritten before being published. I can’t erase her worries about the future, nor mine, of course. But patience is all I could offer.

I went to an oracular reading/poetry reading/gathering with local poets. I listened while poets sat across a table from the oracle and asked their questions. Each one asked a question and chose three cards for inspiration. I overheard questions about the future, many in relationship to achieving specific goals as a writer, a poet, a teacher. I felt the oracle (what else can I possibly call her) was very gifted, so after a hesitation, I took my seat across from her.

I had originally thought I would ask if my memoir would be published at all, or if yes, will it be published before I die. I felt the question didn’t quite get to the root of what I wanted to know. Instead, I asked this: “When will I die?” Despite all sorts of uncertainty about the future, or perhaps because of it, I feel a strong need to know. A need to plan. A need to get my “affairs” in order. A need to get rid of things, not leave a mess for others to sift through after my death. A need to burn my journals (actually I plan to toss them, nothing so dramatic) but I’m holding onto them at this time in case I need to refer back to them for the memoir. The memoir is my life. That’s the only truth here.

As I said, the oracle was gifted. I told her some facts that were weighing heavy for me. A poet friend died suddenly in January. I responded by writing an elegy about her for a literary journal . But then this happened. I was sitting at a community meeting on Friday to discuss the status of palliative care in my county (Clallam County, WA). A speaker gave a talk about grief. You think you know everything you can know about grief after losing parents, working in hospice and palliative care for decades, having your best friend die of AIDS. She had us do a simple exercise. Given three small slips of paper, we were to write the names of three people we care deeply about. Blithely, I did so. We were told to turn them over and shuffle them around. Blithely, I did so. Then she said to turn one over. “You’ve just learned that this person has died,” she said. It was my son, who is the core of my memoir and therefore the core of who I am, my life. He is my life. I was overcome. Overcome with grief. It took a while to compose myself and move on. She was another gifted oracle.

After some conversation with the oracle about these things, I re-framed the question. “Will I die in the next ten years?” I told her that for the past decade or so, on my birthday, I think about my future and if I feel I have more to do in my life, if I feel well enough, I ask for ten more years. I did that again this year my answer was, “yes, yes I do.” I put that out there as an affirmation that I want ten more years. I need ten more years just to get the affairs in order. But if I do or don’t have ten more years, it matters to me if the memoir will be published while I am alive.

She said, “you will live much longer than ten more years, regardless.” It took me a forever minute to understand what she was saying. Die or not, I will be remembered for much longer than the ten years I have asked for. The answer moved me. It is my very Jewish belief that our afterlives reside in the minds and heart of the living who remember us. She was channeling my own faith from “all is naught” back to my soul.

Today is the first day of Passover, holiday of freedom. May we all have a taste of freedom to lean on. Thank you for reading. What will be, will be.