Aunt Marti

My Aunt Marti died last night. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last summer. It was a hard year. My Aunt Marti was a person whose motto was "go" and when she was diagnosed, it was hard for her to reconcile cancer with "go". She stopped talking as much, but she felt very deeply and very closely, you know? I have no idea what it must feel like to stare into your own mortality, to see it come nearer when treatments fail and diagnoses are proclaimed. Marti was strong, brave, and at the end, very peaceful.

I thought about a poem that might help me express Marti best, but all I could find was a poem that expressed my grief. John Hannah reads it in "Four Weddings and a Funeral".

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

--W. H. Auden