A candle for Marty, and all the others

By Maralyn Lois Polak

This past World AIDS Day, rather than march holding a light-stick in the unforgiving cold and rain, I lit a candle at home for my late brother Marty. It’s flickering now, as I type this, a white waxy column encased in one of those tall glass chimneys that seem to burn forever.

So much death lately … it breaks my heart.

This morning, my artist friend “Rollie” burst into tears on the telephone after learning two woman poets we both knew had recently died of cancer. Apparently a brother of the younger stricken woman had called Rollie up to find out how much one of his paintings was worth – it was in the man’s sister’s estate, and he was selling it.

Something awful, awkward – yet awe-inspiring – about listening to, especially, a man crying on the other end of a telephone, and not being able to really do anything about it. Such vulnerability. It’s not something I’m really accustomed to. There’s really no help, no comfort – just listening. My male friends, my former husband, my past lovers, none of these men have ever cried on the telephone.

And so, I let Rollie wring himself out, while I was literally hanging on the line in a kind of companionable, empathic silence.

What can we really ever do for someone but bear witness, be there for each other that way?

When my friend “Alicia’s” 91-year-old mother died suddenly the other week, there was a viewing, the funeral mass, the burial, the funeral luncheon and a wake, stretched over two days.

Although I had overdosed on my own family’s vaguely tragic skein of funerals – and vowed no more – I went. I couldn’t not go and still think of myself as a good person. Alicia and I had traveled to Guatemala together twice. We had forded the same swollen mountain river. I had stayed at her casita near Lake Atitlan. I rode with her along the “Gringo Trail” as she conducted her importing business. She had introduced me to the region’s incredible beauty.

And so, I went.

Surrounded by lavish bouquets, Alicia’s mother “Lily” was laid out in the living room, framed by floor-to-ceiling draperies. This home viewing was a custom from a bygone era, and Alicia declared she wished it could last much longer, perhaps three days, people coming and going, eating and drinking, talking and laughing the inevitable tears away, and then saying their good-byes.

Next to the impeccably coifed, meticulously made-up body was a purse Alicia had stashed – in a secret display of touching devotion – with a pack of her mom’s cigarettes.

The next morning, I attended the funeral mass in Sacred Heart Manor, where “Lily” had resided for nearly a decade. The room was overflowing with friends and relatives. More than a dozen white-haired little old ladies in wheel chairs paid rapt attention as the priest warned we are never prepared for another’s death, and we never know what to say to someone when it happens.

How true.

My brother Marty’s been gone over a decade now. He was gay, but not happy. As time passes, I miss him more and more, especially during the holiday season, when I experience a tremendous emptiness no amount of festivities can allay.

I yearn just to hear his voice.

Marty was a gentle, kindly man who liked cooking, music, science fiction and travel. Through some accident of fate, we were not especially close, though we both had the same initials, were born under the Sign of Gemini, and for a time lived on the same street in Philadelphia, but we didn’t see all that much of each other.

He was two years younger. We took baths together as children, when we were very little, under my mother’s watchful eye.

After he died, I discovered some “separated at birth” kinds of coincidences, like a shared fascination with the Wizard of Oz extending into adulthood. In his effects, I found he had an Oz “Emerald City” lamp, while I have an Oz “Emerald City” doll house (still).

Strangely enough, we both also had the same exact Pentax macro-lens-equipped camera.

Odd, wasn’t it?

But not as odd as a woman acquaintance once asking me why was I so distressed about my brother’s death, since, as she put it, “it wasn’t as if you didn’t know he was going to die – after all, he had AIDS.”

Death is the ultimate interloper. We are never ready, never.

Maralyn Lois Polak

Maralyn Lois Polak is a Philadelphia-based journalist, screenwriter, essayist, novelist, editor, spoken-word artist, performance poet and occasional radio personality. With architect Benjamin Nia, she has just completed a short documentary film about the threatened demolition of a historic neighborhood, "MY HOMETOWN: Preservation or Development?" on DVD. She is the author of several books including the collection of literary profiles, "The Writer as Celebrity: Intimate Interviews," and her latest volume of poetry, "The Bologna Sandwich and Other Poems of LOVE and Indigestion." Her books can be ordered by contacting her directly.
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