Change is coming May 19, 1985

 cold and sunny

 It’s like waiting out a count down.

Upstairs the packing of my neighbors sounds, the hurried steps, the rumble of furniture moving towards the door and stairs, as they rush to a new life a few miles down the road in Clifton.

The ritual bears a painful expression, a change of habit that will leave this space different once they are gone.

The world is changing. The people in it are moving on.

Mary Ann and Johnny leave next week on the twenty-sixth. It hurts to see them go because for years they have been my haven from the storm of dark things. I have gone to them when I hurt most over, Suzanne, over Louise (both in 72 and 82) and most recently over Fran.

Seeing them vanish now is like waiting for the end of the world, perhaps this is what the Bible meant by Rapture.

But for me, it has another meaning: abandonment.

I feel more isolated than ever by their going, as if slowly all the people that I love and car about feel the need to run away.

For a long time, while I was with Fran, I had little time to see these people. Now with Fran out of my life, they leave, too, and I’m left with the echoes of their footsteps and the empty spaces where they lived.

I called Fran’s phone yesterday by mistake. I had meant to call Fotomat.

For more than a year I’d made that same error, since both their numbers begin the same. It seemed more significant this time as if something in my unconscious called for help. I got the cold voice of Fran’s roommate, telling me Frank was not there, and even if she had been, there was little point in talking to me.

This feels a lot like 1980 when Pauly and Garrick moved out of Passaic, after Garrick’s aunt and uncle sold the building the year before, after Lewis and Jewel had gone as well, leaving only vacancy behind, silent emptiness that the voices of strangers bring. It’s not just them going, it is the sense of loss. Change for good or bad takes aways something. Each time I think of Mary Ann, I am flooded with a host of memories. Yesterday, I wrote a poem to her – the first written in months, maybe years, and it made me think of their wedding with me climbing up to the familiar pulpit at St. Brendan’s and reading yet another poem.

Mary Ann and Johnny insisted I come to see them out west for Christmas. But there is a strain of distance in that, and a kind of self-gratifying license to leave. Now that they have bandaged me as if a wound, they feel free to leave.

Deep down I know it is time for a change, to move on to something else, more important, time to leave the illusion of security and make progress.

But where do I go? There doesn’t seem to be a lot beyond these walls that I can reach for.

Even here, the sad truth works its way through my heart, the banging from upstairs says that things cannot remain the same. New noises will arrive within weeks, new voices will fill the yard, and when all is done, this world will be a different world with me out of place, not them.

 

 

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