Kinga mentioned as we were getting ready for bed that this is “one of the last nights” we’d be sleeping in the apartment. “The next to last, actually,” I said, for we’re moving out tomorrow.
One of the most haunting and yet most disconcerting aspects of moving is the consciousness we have of being in a stream of “lasts.” The last time we’ll sleep in this apartment. The last time we’ll lug stuff up these steps.
The last morning coffee here.
Generally, we have no idea a “last” is approaching, though. They take us by surprise and can leave us reeling if it’s a significant last – the last time she talked to her father, for example. You’d think that foreknowledge is a good thing, then. But it tempers everything and makes every moment both indefinitely long and breathtakingly short.
Lying in bed last night, thinking these things, I recalled a poem by W. S. Merwin:
Every year without
“For the Anniversary of My Death”
knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in
life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what