Bruce Wagner - The Empty Chair

Kelly stepped up her pitiful attempt to derail a train already at rest at the uncrowded station of its destination. She became a high priestess of necromancy. She put on proleptic operettas, as if Ryder could be kept alive— was alive — by their stagings. Variation upon variation of impossible possible scenarios unfolded in the altered future of the past. She splintered amber and bid the fossils dance to a tense, grieving, bipolar shitstorm of tenses: past perfects were perverted, bare infinitives laid bare, conditionals unconditionally loved. So sad! In a Hail Mary, she staged a coup to restore democracy, backing the impoverished, exiled leader that was her old, has-been self: she would oust the ambitious, humorless, dharma-thumping, girl-fucking Ashtanga dictator, and restore to power the straight-up, samsara-loving woman of the people who got toppled in her mid-30s. She had a hunch she could be saved— he could be saved — we all would be saved by past-imperfect Kelly, she of the fine eye for antiques and other permanent things, she who believed in mortal sin and taking responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions. She who had no truck with the Ganesha in the room with its prayer flags and banners of evanescence … the old Kelly had no compulsion to acknowledge or worship that tired old circus elephant, let alone sweep up its shit.

With sick, outlandish ferocity my wife composed a speech she never gave, fantasizing that it might have had the power to prevent him from stepping off the chair. As she began to lose her mind, she paced the rug while votive candles burned, reconstructing and reenacting, talking in articulate, disarticulated tongues.

“People kill themselves, Ryder, they do, but it’s a horrible thing! A taboo! They believe they’re escaping the world but the truth of it is that they’re actually going to Hell to be tortured by their enemies! Ryder, God punishes those who take their own lives or even try to! If I ever see you fooling around with a rope — listen: I know I gave you information that was challenging—‘sophisticated’—but it was supposed to be theoretical, it was Buddhist theory and wasn’t meant for everyday life! It was wrong of me, wrong, wrong, wrong! Now I’m going to give you another teaching, the teaching of all teachings! A powerful, secret transmission possessed by only the highest of Masters! Are you ready? Are you ready to hear? Because if you love your mother, this is the teaching you will follow — this is the teaching that is law! The secret teaching is that Permanence rocks! Ryder, do you understand? Permanence! Permanence is the right and natural cosmic law! Even impermanence is permanent! Do you understand? Permanence rocks! Say it, Ryder! Say it! Say it! Say it!”

Within her euphoric derangement — Dr. Bravo came to the house and gave her something for sleep, we were just about to commit her but she was a little better the next day and he said another stay in the hospital might not be such a great idea, he didn’t like the idea of her getting acclimated to institutions and said we should try to put it off and I was actually glad we did, even though it was scary touch-and-go — in this fugue state Kelly thought that if she could only be stern, forceful, parental , if she could rewrite the indelible, just maybe there’d be a chance Ryder might be granted a stay, and allowed to be something other than dead. Even in diminished capacity — she’d take him anyway she could—

Please, Lord Buddha… I have failed the Fourth Noble Truth, for I suffer! I suffer so! I am attached… But Lord Buddha! Cessation of suffering is only attainable if my son should live!

She was moonstruck. A hair away from a 5150—that’s a 72-hour hold. She told us that if Ryder was unpersuaded then at least maybe he could tell her — or me , or the doctor — someone —anyone! — just what it was that he wanted , what maybe he knew but no one else did… whatever the thing is that would allow him to live. To be alive in some way. She was determined to get resolution if it killed her. Which it already had. Would. Will?

Had …

O Bruce, how sad! How sad and unjust! In the day and the night she looped back to the living room to resume her hopeless, abstract disinterment: back to the future and forward to the past — I am telling you, it broke my heart. It was like watching a wildlife documentary of an elephant trying to nudge its stillborn calf to life with her trunk. Before she finally collapsed, the whacked-out musings came in a torrent as she fumbled and burrowed and downshifted, tenderly redacting her teachable moment… Ryder, sometimes when people are in lots of pain, they — well, sometimes — if a person had cancer and was in a hospice — the Dalai Lama said that if the pain of a cancer or someone burned in a fire, then — then it’s the choice of that person. But this is something very extreme. And irreversible! If Mommy or Daddy ever got sick, or even if you got very sick, this is not a path we would choose, darling! Because we have each other, and our love would see us through. And I know we’ve talked a lot about impermanence and rebirth but what is meant by that, what the Buddhists mean is that even a rock is considered impermanent, though a rock can live for thousands of years! I want you to know that life is precious and the main teachings of the Buddha are that birth in a human body — not animal, preta, Hell — is a rarity and a great privilege, and each of us have the sacred responsibility to live our lives joyously, to the end! — suddenly stammering in recognition that she’d already been over this ground, feeling the weight of Ryder kicking at her stomach, not from inside, but from out, trying to climb back in so his rebirth could begin — again — wincing as she heard those imaginary words escape her doomed mouth— no! The contortions of her logic were already losing their power to distract and to numb, like heroin that’d been stepped on too many times. Everything was too much and too soon, death and life, wasn’t there something between the two? (A bardo?) Wasn’t there supposed to be? Because she wanted nothing to do with either of them. Only in deep sleep came the solace of pure, untrammeled consciousness… the house that gave shelter now sheltered no more, the food that gave sustenance no longer sustained, the glass of water once celebrated for its elegance and life-giving beauty was now a draught of poison. The crisp chimney-smoked air, redolent of winter, manna for breath meditation, had become sulphurous and mocking as the last gasp of her fanciful, phoney TMs— teachable moments —came crashing down around her without warning.

She was overwhelmed by nameless dread.

Words!

— the words of friends’ and neighbors’ condolences left her on the floor with multiple stab wounds, only made worse by words of my own, when I consoled with some random anodyne assholism, cool rag of banalities pressed against her mutilated forehead to help her through a rough patch. My poor, poor wife.

It was true. HRH 14—the Dalai Lama— had said that in certain instances self-murder was A-OK. So Kelly, engines failing, overthrew the notion of reckless playfulness ending in tragic accident and gave suicide a shot. Reluctantly embracing the monster rally factoid of it, she tried to accept sponsorship of the idea that the highest of Buddhist authorities had ultimately condoned the act. Only trouble being, Ryder hadn’t been sick. Hadn’t even been in any observable pain, psychic or physical. Nope. Ryder was boyish, seraphic, rambunctious, enthralled…

Gone Fishin’!