Last Friday night, I had a ticket to hear David Whyte, the wonderful West Yorkshire poet, read from his work at the Unitarian Church on Franklin Street in San Francisco. I had been looking forward to it for weeks. A poetry reading by a beloved poet in the city? Quite the rare treat. Plus coming at the end of a rough week at work, it seemed like the perfect antidote. What better way to forget about the two emotionally wearing visits I had done back-to-back Friday afternoon than to listen to Whyte read from his gently profound work?
By 7:30, the church was full and the air of expectancy palpable. It reminded me of the Billy Collins readings I had been to: a large crowd, sort of like a small rock concert, nothing like the usual spotty showings for poets. Whyte has a following. He is deservedly beloved. When his wife came out to introduce him, and the sound system proved her introduction untenable, he walked up the central aisle and attempted to use his clip-on mike to allow her to make the introduction. That didn’t work either. The minutes dragged on, as they tried to sort out the sound problems. I felt for them.
Meanwhile, I was beginning to suffer my own issues in the pew halfway down the church. The emotional toll of the difficult visits I had made that afternoon did some very rapid and unexpected catch-up with me. I suddenly felt extremely vulnerable to a strong attack of grief. I watched David Whyte, one of my poetry heroes, up there on the church altar trying to figure out the sound system, and I pretty rapidly realized that I could not tolerate being in an audience of several hundred, trapped in a pew, listening to a reading, when what I really needed to do was escape and be alone.
I had a vision of the cool windy city streets we had glimpsed on our way from our car to the church. I discovered I very much needed to be outside, walking those streets, with no particular goal or destination, just in the fresh air, alone, with nobody around. Feeling like there was very little time to lose before the reading got underway and it would be rude and disruptive to leave, I leaned across to my friend, made my excuses, told her I was okay but needed to go for a walk and would catch up with her afterwards. And I left.
The steep streets of the Cathedral Hill neighborhood of San Francisco were indeed cool and windy, as the city so often is. I thought longingly of a coffee shop, some anonymous Starbucks (usually anathema to me, but few places more easy to blend into the crowd). Van Ness was a mess of roadwords. No coffee shops in sight, just car dealerships and dark office buildings. I walked uphill to the triangle of churches that make up Cathedral Hill. At this point, I had begun to sob uncontrollably. I was grieving the imminent death of a beloved patient. I had had a profound visit with her that afternoon, during which we discussed what might come after death (white light? Something more wonderful than our poor imaginations could conjure?) She had wept, and I had been grateful her eyes were closed, because I wept too, holding her hand, hoping she would not open her eyes because she hated crying and had told me she didn’t want me to cry about her death either. How not to cry about this? I had driven from her visit directly to another very difficult visit not a mile away, with a young woman who had young children. There had seemed no way to adequately deal with these two visits before heading out to hear David Whyte. Now, it was time to deal. The emotional clock had struck.
I found a stone bench outside St. Mark’s Cathedral. There was nobody around. The city is a curiously and sometimes reassuringly anonymous place to be when you need to have a good cry. Nobody really gives you a second glance. You can sit there on a stone bench and sob in full daylight, and nobody cares. This could seem awful, but it was a relief to me. I didn’t want anyone to notice my distress. I just wanted to sit there, in the center of the giant teeming city, and feel the grief and try to figure out ways to soothe myself.
Eventually I found them. I listened to some favorite songs in my earbuds. And soon I felt ready to go search out that cup of coffee. I found the most excellent little Italian deli on Franklin, with tons of fantastically authentic Italian delicacies. The real Italian barista seemed to sense my distress, as he offered me some free cookies. I really appreciated it, but it just made me want to cry again, so I made my escape with his cup of excellent coffee, and sat on the steps of the Unitarian church listening to Nathaniel Rateliff, and thinking about my two patients. When my coffee was done, I went inside, sat on the floor at the very back of the church, and was just in time for David Whyte’s last poem, a compellingly gorgeous reflection on life and the journey and what happens along the way and what it all might mean.
Despite the exquisite nature of his work, I knew I could not have tolerated the whole reading. Somehow, in the face of the deaths of younger people, all the wisdom, all the philosophy, all the gorgeous poetry in the world was not enough. All the walls we have raised fall down. All the defenses crumble into rubble and rubble’s dust. When you are sitting at the bedside of someone who is facing their imminent and untimely death, there is very little that prepares you for what to say. You just have to rely on instinct. Sometimes all you have is silence, active listening, loving touch.
The reading ended. I rejoined my friends and was grateful to be driven back home to Marin. One day, I hope to go see David Whyte read again, and maybe catch more than just his last poem.
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