Heath Ledger is dead.
At 28. I don’t really believe it yet.
He was so young. And so very talented.
I constantly make fun of people who keep up with celebrities’ lives. But this…
He had such integrity, such ability. He never took a role he didn’t like and think worthwhile. His filmography was already impressive, and he was- after Lords of Dogtown and especially Brokeback Mountain- one of my “ones to watch”, a young Peter O’Toole or Jack Nicholson in the making.
Ledger’s last scene in Brokeback, standing in his dead lover’s closet, is to this day one of only three that have made me, a moviegoer, feel as though what I was watching was private. Looking at his face, sitting in a theater with 200 people and gazing at a 50-foot high screen, I felt as though I were intruding, seeing something I was not meant- should not be able- to see.
I had to fight not to avert my eyes.
The intensity of the suffering he was able to convey with no words, with barely any movement, the magnitude of tragedy and loss… He transmuted breath to the thready pulse of a man bleeding from a mortal wound, touch to the last, frozen gasp of a swimmer drowning in water too dark to grant sight.
It is something few actors have ever accomplished. And it evidenced genuine genius.
Nobody knows whether he committed suicide or not, yet. But whether he wanted to die or not, the world is a little bit darker for this.
For another golden boy lost to the dull and indiscriminate dust.
{
…Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.
Crowned with lilies and with laurel they go: but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains - but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,-
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
...Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
}Labels: death, heath ledger, lament
What do you do with a quest laid upon you by one who is now dead? An endeavor born of pain which cleaved the life of the one who gave it to you?
What do you do with a weapon laid unsheathed across your palms when you are the only one who knows its weight- its murderous edge- but cannot grasp it?
This Sunday it will have been fifteen months since my friend Cindy died.
She was only fifty years old. Smart. Good with her hands- she gutted and refinished the hundred-year-old house she lived in alone. Tall, blonde, pretty. Quiet. Passionate about politics and responsibility and personal action.
She used to work in a sheriff’s office. She suffered sexual harassment there- one of the most extreme cases I’ve ever encountered. It continued for two years and it ended in a man’s- a cocaine addict’s- suicide, and her dismissal.
She fought for reinstatement for five years after that. First as a pro se plaintiff, then as an appellant represented by a feminist attorney.
Like him who day by day unto his draught
She lost. Lost what hope she had of getting her career back. Lost years of her life to an action ultimately dismissed sua sponte by a judge who could not believe that the evidence she had was genuine.
Lost, I think, her faith in the existence of justice. And in the good intentions of other human beings.
When we met I hadn’t yet applied to law or med school. She knew I wanted to be a doctor, but liked the law. She told me a little about her case and, when I expressed interest in the details, invited me over for strong black coffee and excellent jam cookies.
Every Wednesday for two months I would sit and sip and munch in her beautifully refinished kitchen, and we would talk about her case. I would jot down notes sometimes- names, dates, outrageous actions. There were plenty of those.
When she’d finished her story, we had become friends. We would go door-to-door on political campaigns together; meet for horrible Chinese food at a place she liked.
She was diagnosed with spinal cancer 4 months after I was admitted to SIU.
I saw her once more after that, and then never again. Never got to say goodbye to her, to tell her how much her suffering and her strength had moved me. Towards the end she was barely conscious, and her family would not permit anyone to visit.
Her friends John and Bonnie are the executors of her estate, and it wasn’t until 7 months after she died that they told me she had left me her French books and notebooks- and all documents relating to her sexual harassment case.
Of delicate poison adds him one drop more
And it wasn’t until then that I realized that they- her best friends- had no real idea what had happened to her.
She never talked about it, they said. Never told them or her family. No-one ever really knew what had happened, only that it had destroyed something inside her.
Had she told me?
Yes.
They had the enormous forbearance and decency not to ask. Had they done so before telling me that no one knew exactly what had happened, I’d have told them on the assumption that they knew some of it already. But this…
She meant me to carry the entire story alone- had told only me in all the years between its happening and the day she died. Had left me the only proof in existence of the events which made her the woman she was to that last day.
Wanted me to do something. To say something.
To make it mean something.
And I don’t know how.
Earth and sky forgive me, because I still, 8 months later, don’t know where to start.
How do I make the events which sliced the hope from her eyes, the light from her smile, mean more than she already has?
She survived it. She fought, and then fought again, until there was nothing of her left with which to fight. And even when she no longer believed in justice, in true decency- she worked for it anyway.
Till he may drink unharmed the death of ten…
She lived through something that would have made another woman a ringing shell. So her laughter sounded hollow at times- so what? It was still there. Still carried enough spark to warm her eyes once in a while.
The documents I hold are a weapon I have not the expertise nor time to wield. But they are mine, and she entrusted them to me, and so I bear them, a weight of helplessness and grief I have not the skill to ease or mend.
Because to do less would be to dishonor her pain, to forget her wounds and the grace with which she carried them.
What can I do with what she gave me? This small and pathetic commentary is unworthy of her. Unworthy even of her name.
Nothing, nobody can do more than she did.
I drink- and live- what has destroyed some men.
I’m sorry, Cindy. (And while I have strength, I will carry it for you.)
Labels: death, diary, human rights, lament
