Christina

Photo; Shandra Beri

The fear that kept you from basking joyfully in your life covers you now in the form of a thin white hospital blanket. I try to draw your attention through the triple-paned glass of your luxuriously wide, high window to see the finger-tip close, verdant mountain projecting its tranquil majesty into your expensive private room- but you refuse to turn your head to look. To you it may as well be a filthy parking lot hidden behind an ugly, soiled solid grey cinder-block wall. There was no true beauty in this life for you and it will not intrude now. The hallucinations that envelop you spill unedited from your lips and are painstakingly detailed and salacious; sex rings, bondage, slavery and a conspiracy of silence. In those looping, confused (and now opiated) utterances I can't help but wonder where is the peace from the god you spent a lifetime claiming? Where is the solid-to-the-core 'happy' you force fed everyone around you as your true self? In your final moments, the curtain is dropping to expose that which you spent a lifetime sublimating. Your brittle veneer dissolving into the barren gash where you always claimed your soul resided as you crossed yourself before every meal. Now you are whispering the bitter truth through gritted teeth; distrust, jealousy, sexual fetish, anger... emptiness. When you say my name, your eyes form suspicious slits and you only see a stranger.

Christina, I 'saw' you long ago. Through your carefully rehearsed, perfectly mannered daily performances percolated a simmering discontent. I studied it and marveled at your improv skills whenever I poked the bear by knocking you off your script. It was so much work for you just to 'present' Christina every day that I developed empathy for you- an empathy that eventually grew into affection. You were my unaware curmudgeon masquerading as a well mannered proper English lady. I enjoyed you tremendously.

Christina, you will not suffer. You will not be alone- but I am drenched in the awareness that you died so long ago this moment is almost unnecessary.