Memento Mori: On Receiving An Incredible Gift from Beyond the Grave
Bees, For Hilary Eshelman (October 1, 1974-July 7, 2024)
Bees For Hilary Eshelman (October 1, 1974-July 7, 2024) Today in the garden, Delighted at the bloomriot Suddenly in every corner, And in celebration of our brief desert display, I gathered armfuls of blooms For vases placed in many rooms. Flowers dusted my naked ankles, And kissed my wrists as I grasped them With delicate fervor. Some tall penstemon bloomspikes even brushed The hair on the top of my head. It seemed limitless. Everywhere, color. Life. But nonetheless, Seeing their buzzing and endangered industry, I stopped before I was halfway through — Deciding That despite this vast array, And my many empty glass and porcelain mouths Lined up inside and waiting, The bees out here Enjoyed the flowers even more.
I wrote this poem in April of 2022 for Hilary Eshelman, a dear friend and beekeeper who spontaneously became allergic to bees, ending her career in that field after she almost died from an anaphylactic reaction. Beekeeping was one of many passions and vocations in her life, and we accompanied each other on numerous spirited journeys into activism, volunteer work, environmentalism, human rights, art — anything that helped make the world a better place.
I knew what a tragedy it was for her to lose her ability to tend her precious bees, and one day while I was out gathering flowers for arrangements, I noticed bees everywhere.
I have always loved bees and other critters, but my appreciation for them grew through Hilary and her wealth of knowledge. She and her ex-husband not only kept bees all over southern Arizona, but they made natural products, gave honey as gifts, and even did no-kill bee removal, moving entire colonies out from peoples’ properties to apiaries where the bees could thrive. Even after Hilary developed her dangerous allergy, she still advocated for bees, and so I thought of her nearly every time I saw one.
On this glorious April day a couple years ago, my arms were full of blossoms: blanket flower, palo verde branches, almond blossoms, desert marigold, Sonoran coneflower, brittlebush. Most of them were native plants, and all of them were good for pollinators. When I turned the corner toward the side yard I almost dropped my bouquets as I saw the penstemon grove that had grown nearly a foot since I’d seen them a couple days before. They were even taller than I was!
And there were bees everywhere. It felt like being completely encapsulated in life and renewal.
Inspired, I texted Hilary a photo of these incredible blooms, along with the poem accompanying this writing. I scribbled the entire poem in one take, sitting on the concrete sidewalk under the wispy shade of gargantuan penstemon spikes, surrounded by the buzzing of beewings in the perfumed spring air.
And sure enough, I stopped collecting flowers, brought what I’d gathered inside, and let go of my plans to fill every room in the house with vases full of color. The bees (and moths and hummingbirds and ants and…) needed the flowers more.
Now, just two years later, Hilary is gone.
Typing out that sentence brings sorrowful, choking sobs as I grapple with her sudden and senseless loss.
I know I need to grieve this, and part of that is honoring her memory. I had decided to take some time to just recover privately, taking a break from writing, social media, and anything else public or obligatory, but after a tiny miracle last night, I decided that one way to both grieve and honor Hilary is to share her with you.
(Side note: I wrote this piece over a week ago and it has taken me at least a dozen tries to make it all the way through the editing process. Writing may be the most cathartic process for grief that I know, and I can feel the healing occur each time I revisit this with an open heart, even though it is painful. Getting the words out, shaping them, and making them something that feels authentic and heartfelt enough for Hilary’s memory has been a profound process as I move through the many facets of losing someone so dear.)
On Mother’s Day this year, while I was in New York, Hilary went to urgent care with what she thought was a urinary tract infection. By the time I got back from my trip a week later, her symptoms had gotten worse, and when she went back, they found what they thought was a cyst. Shortly after that, we discovered that it was not a cyst. It was uterine cancer, and within just a couple of weeks it had grown so aggressively that it was the size of an eight-month-old fetus. Hilary also had blood clots in her legs, making them swell to the point that she could barely move, and the growth from the tumor was so bad it had pulled the muscles in her abdomen, causing internal bleeding that led to sepsis.
The doctors still thought she could make a full recovery, so they put her on chemo and sent her home, planning to do surgery once the tumor had shrunk enough to safely remove. If the chemo was a success, they said she might be able to live a normal life. If not, they expected her to live another two years. So, a group of us set up care, picking up medicine, taking food, spending time, running errands, making phone calls, taking her to appointments, making sure she could get the best care and comfort possible and to get her the best outcome possible.
Just about a month later, a week before I was scheduled to leave for a family reunion cruise, Hilary was told that the chemo wasn’t working, and she was sent home on hospice care. This time, because the cancer was much more aggressive than they thought, they gave her one or two more weeks to live.
She needed round-the-clock attention, and with the horrific change in her prognosis, our care group expanded to include dozens who came to be with Hilary as she passed, to tell her that they loved her, to support her or support those of us who stayed up all night with her. I offered to cancel my family reunion trip, but she urged me to go, saying that it was “a miracle” that my family, which had once rejected me for being queer, had invited me on this trip for the first time. Although they had gathered regularly over the years, it was the first time I’d been included, and it would be the first time we’d all be together since the 1980s.
On the night of July 4th, I stayed up all night with her, giving her hourly injections and cleaning out her g-tube until early in the morning. Again and again she held my hand, even as she slept.
A few days later, just hours before I left for my trip, she passed.
I spent that week in a foggy cyclone, whipping into reminiscence and jokes with my family and then to sobbing into the dark ocean expanse beyond my room’s balcony. Just as Hilary had said, the trip was a miracle. Through situations I could not control or predict, I ended up with my own private room, which became a healing chamber. While I saw old family patterns, roles, and dysfunctions play out, I also got to immerse myself in natural beauty, swimming with more fish than I could have imagined, watching the sun play on the water, sweating so profusely I felt like my body was purging all my pain, reconnecting with cousins I hadn’t talked to in years, and basking in hard-won love and acceptance.
After I got home, my family wanted to set up a shared album, so even though I’d never used it before, I suggested we use Google Drive, since everyone in the family had a Google account. My brother and cousin set up a Google photos drive. Although it had been my suggestion, I’d never used Google for photo sharing before. In fact, I hadn’t known that it was a completely separate app.
As I tried to figure out how to upload my own photos to share with everyone, all of a sudden hundreds of images flooded my screen. It took a moment to realize that every single one had been sent by Hilary over the years. She’d set up a Google photo drive to share with me and had been adding photos to it for a decade — but somehow she never told me about it. And because I’d never used the Google Photos app, I’d never known they were there!
A week and a half after she died, here was Hilary giving me another gift — a decade of memories: pages and pages of selfies together, numerous parties and celebrations, rituals, tea, dinners, volunteer work, silly videos, desert harvesting, and even my wedding, which she helped coordinate.
Here it was, another miracle. If I hadn’t gone on the trip and hadn’t suggested that we all use Google, my techie brother never would have set up the Google photo album, and I never would have known about the hundreds of photos and videos Hilary had been secretly collecting for me over the years.
Also contained in this digital trove were videos of rituals we did together, things we learned together, and many years of everything from silliness to social work. Now I’ll never forget the way her laughter thundered through a room, or the eye-rolling delight she took in my home-made chocolates. And then there were photos of other loved ones we had lost over the years, like my friend, the poet and author Isaac Kirkman, who died in 2020, and Stella Tucker, the leader of the indigenous sacred saguaro harvest, and my “Tohono O’odham Mom,” as she called herself, who passed in 2019.
This was a time capsule of some of the most important and meaningful moments of my adult life, suddenly appearing as if curated by the ghost of my recently departed friend.
What a treasure. And what a reminder of the impression we leave in the lives of those we love.
Perhaps Hilary will live on in every bee I see. She didn’t even have enough time to update her will, but over the years, she assembled a surprise gift that would come only after she departed this world. And it inspires me. What do I want to leave for those that I love?
But even more, how can I love them while we are still on this n earth together, in this brief, beautiful, fragile moment we get to share in this life?
Hilary only had a single week to come to grips with her impending death, to make her last wishes known, to say goodbye — to do all the living she still wanted to do in this life. It was not enough time. But it was more than many people get. The last week of her life was a parade of love and service toward her, with people flying in from all over the country to see her one last time, even if she was asleep, even if she was in a medically-induced fog.
I am reminded of the Greek Stoics who considered death in a practice they called memento mori, believing that regular contemplation of one’s impending death and the ephemerality of life helped them live more purposefully, more nobly, with better character and gratitude, and then helped them accept death with honor and peace when it finally came. This has certainly been a memento mori for me. None of us is guaranteed our next breath, so why not make each one count? And in the meantime, I’ll pay even more attention to the people I love who still walk the earth with me. What a gift that I got to share over two decades of friendship with a person as wonderful as Hilary. And what I gift that I get to be here with you too.
Beloved, life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us, so be quick to love, make haste to be kind, and may the blessing of the One who made us and loves us and goes before us be upon you and all those whom you love, this day and always.
Amen.
Bees For Hilary Eshelman (October 1, 1974-July 7, 2024) Today in the garden, Delighted at the bloomriot Suddenly in every corner, And in celebration of our brief desert display, I gathered armfuls of blooms For vases placed in many rooms. Flowers dusted my naked ankles, And kissed my wrists as I grasped them With delicate fervor. Some tall penstemon bloomspikes even brushed The hair on the top of my head. It seemed limitless. Everywhere, color. Life. But nonetheless, Seeing their buzzing and endangered industry, I stopped before I was halfway through — Deciding That despite this vast array, And my many empty glass and porcelain mouths Lined up inside and waiting, The bees out here Enjoyed the flowers even more.
I love you. I really do.
Eric
I have read this 3 times and the effect only deepens. The love you share with Hilary endures and is stitched into our consciousness through your beautiful expression of gratitude. Thank you for sharing your love and your grief with such courage and clarity. I love you too, Eric. I really do.