[RADIOLAB INTRO]

ROBERT KRULWICH: 13: Gone. This is a reading from Heaven's Coast by Mark Doty, who's one of—in my opinion anyway—one of the great living poets in America. This, however, is not poetry. This is prose. It's Mark's description of the death of his longtime partner Wally.

ROBERT: Thursday night, January 20, Wally's smiling. I get the Polaroid and asked him to show me that smile once again. And he does. The last time he'll be able to.

ROBERT: Friday January 21. The last words I will write for a month. "Time's the engine that decks the world in its beautiful clothes, and not one, not one is exempt." Wally's breathing changes, becomes heavier, regular. Breathing's work now, as if it were an audible sign of some transformative process within. He seems turned in on himself, not speaking. I don't think he can speak now. I touch him and talk to him. We know it's time for the morphine in an eyedropper on his tongue. Perhaps there's no pain, but if there is he couldn't tell us, and the opiate will ease the work for him. Rena comes and says goodbye. His eyes are closed, and when she comes into the room, but he opens the right one, the still good side of his face, and he takes her in.

ROBERT: She tells him she hopes he's not scared, and they spend a long time looking at each other. She says, "Knowing you has been a great gift in my life." And that she'll always carry him in her heart. Then she's quiet, giving him her love. "And then we looked at each other for some time," she told me later, "And I kissed him and I wished him a safe and joyful journey, and I left and I didn't see him in his body again."

ROBERT: I call his mother who's planning to come on Sunday. She comes Saturday morning instead, but by then his eyes are closed. She sit alone with him for awhile. He opens his right eye just a tiny bit. We can tell that he sees her. All that afternoon he looks out at us through that little space, but I know he sees and he registers, and I know that he's loving us actively. And I know if nothing else about this man, after 13 years I know that.

ROBERT: So into the line of his vision I bring Bisbee and Portia the cats and Arden and Roe the dogs. And I sit there myself all afternoon. The lamp's on, the house is circled in snow and early winter darkness. The afternoon is so quiet and deep, it seems almost to ring like chimes, a cold, struck bell. I sit into the evening when he closes his eyes. There is an inaudible roaring, a rush beneath the surface of things, beneath the surface of Wally, who is now almost no surface, as if I could see into him, into the great hurrying current, that energy, that forward motion which is life going on.

ROBERT: I was never this close to anyone in my life. His living so deep and absolute that it pulls me close to that interior current so far inside his life and my own. I know I am going to be more afraid than I have ever been, but right now I am not afraid. I am face to face with the deepest movement in the world, the point of my love's deepest reality where he is most himself, even if that self empties out into no one swift river, hurrying into the tumble of rivers out of individuality, into the great rushing whirlwind of currents, God moving on the face of the waters.

ROBERT: Suddenly I'm so tired, I think I can't stay awake another minute. Darren comes in—he's been in and out all day, spelling me, seeing where things are, and says he'll sit with Wally awhile. I say, "I'll sleep on the couch for an hour." I don't think I'd been lying down 10 minutes when I sit up wide awake. Darren is, in fact, on the way to fetch me, but I've come on on my own. I know it's time. I say to Wally, while the breath comes more shallowly, "All the love in the world goes with you." Each breath he draws in goes a little less further into his body so easily. He never struggles. There's no sense of difficulty, no sense of holding on.

ROBERT: Arden the dog stands up suddenly, moved by what imperative I don't know, and falls out of the bed. Darren says, "That's just Arden. He's okay," not wanting anything to steal Wally's attention from where he is now. I say, "You go easy, babe. Go free." The world seemed in absolute suspension, nothing moving anywhere. Everything centered. "Go easy." But you go.

ROBERT: Radiolab is funded in part by the Sloan Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Science Foundation.

-30-

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of programming is the audio record.