Page 51 of All the Way to the River

I do not want this assignment, Rayya.

I do not want to tell the people the details about how you died.

Or I could just insert the official announcement that I made on social media:

She was my love, my heart, my best friend, my teacher, my rebel, my angel, my protector, my challenger, my partner, my muse, my wizard, my surprise, my gift, my comet, my liberator, my rock star, my impossible non-cooperator, my otherworldly visitor, my spiritual portal, and my baby.

I loved you so much, Rayya. I would tell you to rest in peace, but I know that you always found peace boring.

May you rest in excitement. I will always love you.

But that would be a cheat, because it wouldn’t tell the truth about what actually happened.

And you would want me to tell the truth about what actually happened.

I wish I could tell the people that you died peacefully, Rayya—and my God, how we all tried to help you die peacefully—but the truth is that you died exactly the way you lived: defiantly, violently, bravely, furiously, self-destructively, uncooperatively, ridiculously, exhaustingly, proudly.

You did it all backward from the way it’s supposed to go.

Instead of your body getting colder, you burned with fever.

Instead of your heart slowing down, your pulse raced to nearly two hundred beats a minute.

Instead of relaxing, you became increasingly agitated with every hour.

For two days, you were unconscious but not peaceful.

You were choking and struggling. It sure looked to me like you were suffering, even as the hospice nurses kept filling you with painkillers and sedatives and telling me that you were beyond all sensation.

You didn’t look like you were beyond all sensation.

I kept telling the nurses and the doctor: “She’s an opioid addict—do you have any idea how many drugs this woman can consume without it having any effect on her? Giving her these tiny little doses of liquid morphine is like feeding crackers to a lion. Are you sure she’s not in pain?”

They kept assuring me that you were not in pain—but, honey, I know you, and I could see that you were in pain.

As you struggled, everyone you loved gathered around you, trying to help.

We kept whispering in your ear, “Let go, let go, let go, it’s okay to let go”—because that’s what the death experts always tell people to say when someone is dying. But I finally suggested to everyone that we stop saying that, because I could tell it was pissing you off.

(Actually, I clearly heard you say in my head: Why don’t you bitches let go, if it’s so fucking great to die? )

So eventually we stopped bossing you around and put on David Bowie for you, and then we all went silent.

I had a sense that the ancestors who had been gathering on the other side of the veil were asking you to let go, as well. I imagined them saying, Come to us, come to us, Rayya, let go and come to us —but I sensed they were pissing you off, too.

You simply refused to surrender, and I guess that was the beautiful part?

It was beautiful, because it was so you .

It felt very punk rock, very Rayya Elias, very Harley Loco.

It was like you were raising two middle fingers to the sky, even though you couldn’t lift your arms anymore.

It felt to me like you were saying to death, “If you want me, motherfucker, you’re gonna have to come for me. ”

And so death came for you.

Of course it did.

What did you think, honey—that you could beat it? Just because you had beat it so many other times, did you think you could beat it forever? That you could talk your way out of it, fight your way out of it, hustle your way out of it, charm your way out of it?

No.

Death always gets the last word.

Your battle was fierce, though, right down to the last truly horrifying moments.

You didn’t look like someone who was dying while surrounded by love and care; you looked like someone who was dying all alone.

You refused to take comfort from any of us.

You wouldn’t relax no matter how much morphine we gave you or how many gentle words we spoke.

You weren’t about to release your soul into any goddamn ocean of peace.

You weren’t about to walk toward any goddamn white light. Not on anyone else’s terms, anyhow.

This was definitely not the gentle death I had planned for you.

(Me and my plans! When did my plans for you ever work out?)

It was truly awful to behold, yet you had never seemed more yourself.

I watched you die for forty-eight hours, Rayya.

I did this because I had promised you I would be there to bear witness, right to the end.

I did it because it was my destiny to watch you die—which you and I both knew to be true.

And somehow it was okay because, horrible as your death was to behold, I knew in my heart that it could not have gone any other way.

But a miracle happened right after you died.

Instantly—as soon as you took your final ragged breath—your face settled into an expression of peace.

Actually, it was more than simply peace.

My baby, my love—you looked so satisfied .

I might even say that you looked thrilled.

We all saw it and it made us gasp with amazement—those of us who had been sitting vigil for your final battle.

I had never seen such relaxed joy on your face before, Rayya—not even in your moments of greatest ecstasy, creativity, or love.

You looked absolutely delighted with yourself, delighted with everything, delighted forever—just so radiantly delighted .

You looked proud and pleased and surprised and amused and knowing and so, so, so happy!

You looked free beyond any freedom I have ever seen.

My love, do you remember how I stayed with your body for hours after you took your last breath?

Do you remember that part?

Do you remember how you’d made me promise a few weeks earlier that I wouldn’t leave your body alone after you died?

(“I’m afraid of being left alone in a dark room as a corpse,” you had told me.

“Please stay with me.”) And so I stayed there in the bed with you—holding you and kissing you and telling you stories about the blue-eyed peoples and the brown-eyed peoples and all the incredible adventures they’d had together in Earth School.

“What a ride you took us on, Rayya,” I told you—and I could hear your laughter.

We washed your still-warm body—these exhausted women, who all loved you so much.

We put clean clothes on you.

Your sister and I joined hands and prayed over you.

Somebody called the funeral home.

I asked them to delay collecting your body for as long as legally possible so we could have some more time together.

Do you remember that part, Rayya?

Did you see your own body as we took care of you?

Did you see how that expression of delight never left your face?

Did you see how the look of joy just got richer?

Did you hear how everyone who came into the room commented upon it?

Even the hospice nurse, as she wrote out your death certificate, said, “I hope this isn’t an inappropriate thing to say, but I have never seen a happier face on a dead body.

Gosh, whatever your friend saw in the last moment of her life, it must’ve been pretty amazing. ”

Did you hear us talking about you, Rayya, or were you already gone?

Were you still with us at that point, my love?

Or were you already with them?