Let My Epitaph Read…By Angela Hite

I’m a copy cat. I am.
And I’m not even very good at it. I’m out here in the open admitting to it.
I’m sharing something brilliant that somebody else has shared. It’s like the double-dipping of blogging…but I just had to do it.

My friend Angie Hite has a wonderful blog that I love and the other day she posted this. It has everything; a virtual smorgasbord of yumminess; life and death, poetry, Sue Monk Kidd, curiosity, and the quest for notoriousness. I want to be notorious for something…don’t you?
Take a look and…
Carry on,
xox

http://www.angelahite.com/let-my-epitaph-read/

Take it away Angie…and Mary…and Sue…

Let My Epitaph Read…

Ya know, sometimes what I want to share is what SOMEONE ELSE has written! That is the case here. Not only do I want to share Mary Oliver’s poem “When Death Comes,” but I want to share Sue Monk Kidd’s commentary on it, and an Emily Dickinson quote within the commentary! The only thing I personally have to add, and this will make sense at the end, is: “Me, too!”

Here is an excerpt of Mary Oliver’s poem (please read the whole thing sometime):

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

And here is s Sue Monk Kidd essay from her book Firstlight, reacting to Oliver’s poem:

“Recently on the eve of my birthday a woman said to me with a completely serious face, ‘When I turn fifty, I want to become notorious.’

‘Notorious for what?’ I asked.

This seemed to throw her. ‘Well, I’m not sure,’ she said. “I haven’t gotten that far along with the idea.’

Becoming notorious for the sake of becoming notorious was a peculiar idea to me. Besides that, had she consulted a dictionary for the meaning of notorious? I went home and looked it up. It said, ‘Notorious – widely but infamously known or talked about.’

I couldn’t see the appeal. But after my conversation with the woman, practically against my will, I began to entertain a thought: What would I want to be notorious for at fifty?

I was still secretly working on it when a group of women gathered to help me celebrate my birthday. For our evening’s entertainment, I brought out my book of Mary Oliver’s poems and suggested we take turns reading. As bemused glances were exchanged, it occurred to me if I did ever become notorious, it would not be for bacchanalian parties.

I read last, choosing a poem with the cheery title ‘When Death Comes.’ I read along unsuspecting till I got to a line in which Oliver writes about coming to the end and wanting to say that she has spent her life married to amazement.

Suddenly something unexpected happened to me. My throat tightened. My eyes filled. I don’t mean sad tears, but the kind that leak from something brimming.

I looked at the faces around the room. They seemed beautiful and shining to me. I glanced at a common white lily in a vase and honestly, the sight nearly wiped me out. It was that impertinently gorgeous. Out of nowhere, plain and simple objects were rising up to show off their flame. The divine, unnameable spark. I couldn’t think what to name the feeling except amazement at life. It was as if something fell from my eyes and I saw everything just as it is.

One second I was going along in a jaded marriage with life (because let’s face it, the intimacy can fade after a while if you don’t work on the relationship) when it rode in and swept me off my feet. I learned to be in love with life again. And I didn’t even know the romance had slipped.

‘Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it,’ wrote Emily Dickinson. Somehow I’d begun moving through life on automatic pilot, half-seeing, half-here, abducted by the dreaded small stuff. But the evening of my party, I realized all over again: we will have a true and blissful marriage to life only to the extent we are aware.

So. That’s how I resolved the question about what I wished to become notorious for at fifty. Let it be for nothing more than harboring a wild amazement at life. Let it be for choking up at poetry and the sight of human faces. For falling into easy rapture over lilies and all the other run-of-the-mill marvels that make up life. Let me become notorious for going around with my bridal veil tossed back and my mouth saying I do. Renewing my vows with life. Every day. A hundred times a day.”

Me, too, Mary and Sue and Emily! Me, too! Me, too! Can I get an Amen?