It has been with some sort of cringe that I’ve read the same Mary Oliver quote with increasing regularity- seeing it as tattoos, word art at big box stores, and terrible older-greeting-card-style social media posts from inspiring and notable people. There’s something about only taking the last line or two of a great poem that gnaws at me. But also, I heard her speak in a rare interview about the grasshopper starring in the beginning of that poem — how it was real, and the sugar it ate was the frosting from the birthday cake of a 90-year-old Portuguese woman — and that was always more interesting to me. But, ultimately, the cringe was and is a little bit of my own defensive jealousy and resentment. The challenge to not just breathe a little and call it living, and the reminder that I do only have this one life, and it is half over already. And, it’s wildness and preciousness is half-again (at least!) as wild and precious as it once had been.
My four-year-old son rolled over my body the night before Mary Oliver passed from this version of herself into whatever energy and matter and bits lie beyond and exclaimed, “isn’t it great to be alive?!” And, I was filled with sadness thinking of how long might he get to feel this before he realizes it’s just not, or not always. Or, well, it’s just complicated. I desperately want to never die. I desperately want to live.
