To Hell With the Bathrobe

Marylor had no time to waste

---

I discovered the following note written to my friend Marylor Wilson after hearing of her death. I decided to share it again. She was a phenomenal poet/human being and steadfast friend. In 2019 Marylor asked me to help her assemble a manuscript of her poems and find a publisher. It would be her first book. The year before I had put together a collection of poems by Ed Lahey, Marylor’s ex-husband, that I’d discovered after Ed died, and the Drumlummon Insitute opted to publish. She liked the look of Ed’s book, Moving On: The Last Poems of Ed Lahey, so we sent the manuscript to Drumlummon who loved it. Summer Lightning made her an author at 83.

---

1949, April

It was raining.
Dad told Mom, 
Mom told me:
he moved out today.

Here's a game
for rainy days:
sit on the front step
in the downpour,
point a finger
into the torrent.
If a single drop
strikes squarely 
on your fingernail,

you
win.

---

June 10, 2020

Dearest Marylor,

Please forgive me for not getting back to you. What am I saying? I'm sorry for that, for asking for your forgiveness. I know you won't accept that nonsense. There is nothing to forgive. I'm just feeling guilty because for the last four or five days I was going to call you back and didn't get to it. You and a couple other friends have been on my call back list for awhile now. Ain't that how it goes? I will miss you. I'll miss making fun of your lost short-term memory. You were such a good sport about that. And given your attention to detail and stubborn independence, you amazed me how well you handled the loss of it, how easily you gave into letting go. That's not to say it was an easy transition, but once you'd given into it, our visits continued as wonderfully interesting as they'd ever been.

When we started in on your book project, I thought possibly we'd both lose our minds. You were losing that short-term recall at the same time we were trying to put it all together, and every change we made you'd forget the next day. The regularity of that pattern was beginning to stoke the fires of your paranoia and my frustration. At one point I thought we might fail the mission of getting it done, but Sara stepped in, stepped up, in the way that only our children can and held your hand across the finish line. You were so lucky to be loved so fiercely, but then we're talking tit-for-tat, right? The love you take is equal to the love you make! The reason you were so widely loved was your easy way of steadfastly loving us. And I think we have to blame a lot of that on your mother. She was a challenge but you never wavered in your love for her. “To Hell with the bathrobe!” She loved you crazy-fierce.

We are the product of our parents, chips off the old blocks, and hopefully a new and improved model. Well, we should be, we remember every trait in our parents we hated. And if they were good, decent human beings at the core, that part of them we inherit without thinking about it. Your mother was tough, smart, and a bit crazy. She burned for you like a forest fire, and you loved her in spite of her flaws . . . which really is what love is. For we are all flawed and all worthy of love.

---

Stirring Cocoa

Mine are the hands of my mother,
the blue veins
and shapely fingers,
slowly stirring cocoa,
circling the pan
clockwise, counter-clockwise,
waiting for the steamy sign 
of readiness.

She taught me
the rudiments of a proper life
and deep sorrow for badly-used people
all over the world.
She had three rules for me:
	Don't cry.
	Do not call boys on the phone.
	If you must marry, elope.

Tough times and bad habits
hardened and profaned her.
When I had an offer, I did elope.

Years later, I'm remembering the hospital,
her small figure gasping in a wheelchair,
nurses hovering and rushing her down the hall
to emergency surgery, but oh! 
They forgot her bathrobe!
She waves a thin arm high in the air
like the captain of a horse cavalry
and shouts, “To Hell with the bathrobe!”
It was her day to die.

Today in my mind's eye I see
the arches of a medieval hospice,
and a white-winged Sister of Charity
gliding to my mother's bedside,
my mother rising up, smiling
and saying, “I'm feeling better.”

But I want her here,
with me, 
stirring cocoa.

	remembering Mary Liggett Lore, 1907-1972

---

I love you. I told you that once, maybe twice, which is like huge for me. If I love someone and they get one of those confessions out loud, my work is done. You knew that. You showed me you loved me, and that made me love you even more. So when I found out today that you had left, it knocked me off my pins. We'd talked about it many times, of course, and how that it doesn't matter because no one is ever ready for that news, the suddenness of it, that final curtain falling down, and we are left behind . . . without you in this case.

It reminds me of my cat, Felix, in a way. Our other cat, Luna, died last week. It was time to put her down. It was a difficult decision that had been hanging for some time. Luna was with us when Felix arrived. He had been my mom's cat for a few months before she died. So Luna had always been here in Felix's mind. Luna resented him from the beginning to the end (of her). She worked overtime to keep him in second place, so they were never “snuggly” close. But when she disappeared, it took him a week trying to figure out where she was. He looked for her inside the house and outside. He kept waking out of sleep and looking over his shoulder, “where was she?” She was always there monitoring his every move.

When one of us dies, the rest of us clamor to process it. We sift through all the shit (most of it in our heads, our memories). I read your book again cover to cover. Found other poems you'd emailed me over the last year. Listened to a phone message I'd saved, your voice, your delivery, what made you such a delightful companion to visit with. But the book, it's such a good book. I'm really proud that you trusted me to help you get it done. You are so independent, so precise and in control, that I was a bit worried the book would take too long and you might lose your marbles before we could get it into print. I know it was more difficult for you wrestling those two competing forces inside of a once incredible brain that was failing, slowly thankfully, but failing just the same. So I will continue to spend some time with you in my head and on the page, bask in the warmth of your friendship and wit. If I'm lucky a poem will come to me. I know you'd like that. Till then here’s one Ed penned for you.

---

Night Shadows
(for Marylor)

When the evening
came at sea,
the fire on Alki Beach
sang in the damp firewood
like a whisper.

The sand was white
and dark beneath us.
We huddled there in our
Salvation Army clothes
like night shadows
of the firelight.

We thought of cafes
we had known,
fine dinners,
meals we wished
we could eat again.
We did not speak,
simply leaned hungrily
into one another.

The light danced around
as we drew closer.

	Ed Lahey

---

You were a trooper to the end, a wonderful model of humanity. Thank you for your honesty and openness, for your friendship and your poetry. Goodnight, dear heart. I can't believe that it was just one year ago you were wrestling with the dream-come-true exuberance and the paralyzing anxiety alternating inside you at the thought of reading from your book of poems for an audience of people. It was what you had always hoped for and at the same time feared wouldn't happen. And when the dates were set, the fear of it almost overwhelmed you. Not unlike many other things that happened in your life, you rose to the occasion and performed like the champ you are whether on stage or in day to day life. You were you. That is life's ultimate success story, for all of us, rising to the best of ourselves.

So, please say “hi” to Ed for me. I feel very lucky to have known both of you. Two very kind and different people. Two extraordinary poets. A husband and wife. A father and mother. A divorce. Alcoholism. Mental illness. And that turgid ocean of love and pain ever-so-lightly chronicled in the poems you both wrote. I am thrilled that the two of you are enshrined as Montana poets at the Drumlummon Institute.

Just before your Summer Lightning reading at the Public House, I wrote you a poem that I thought about reading at your debut, but I didn't want to delay what everyone was there to hear. I wrote this thinking about your poems. Like most of mine and yours, the poem is self-explanatory, but I want to say it arose out of a genuine fear I experienced on a trip to your house to meet you. When you failed to answer the doorbell or the phone, your car at home, I thought you could be in trouble or worse. My heart was beating faster. When someone pulled up on the street and dropped you off, I felt the relief, that reprieve, and realized I'd just done a dress rehearsal for your death. Today turned out to be your day. Your wait is over, but you made the most of your time while you were here. Thanks, M'dear, we'll see you on the other side.

Love,

Mark

---

Hearts & Spades
	—for Marylor

A glance at the clock,
the one in my head,
read in increments of memory
and calendar years, reminds me
I am now a member of
the senior citizens club,
and in that revered order
of accumulated wisdom,
where elders wait in perpetuity,
I find my instincts for herding
kids and dogs has evolved
into monitoring my fellow
gray-haired friends.

So when I don't hear from someone
whom I regularly hear from,
death is more than a possibility.
If and when they surface 
and smile at me, my pre-panic
elevated heart-rate jumps  
to joke, “I thought you were dead!”
No explanations necessary.
We sit down and cut for the deal.
I watch them shuffle the deck,
notice the texture of their hands,
the stiff fingers, their skin and mine.

I gather up the cards, holding them
a little closer to my chest
and catch them looking at me.
I smile, take my time slowly 
arranging my hand. We both know
there's no hurry here. Waiting
is a key part of the game.

	Mark Gibbons
	2019