On Sleeping and Stravinsky’s Wife

Stravinsky’s wife got the shaft.  She tirelessly championed her husband and musical pioneer, watched as he spent almost twenty years living a double life with his mistress and eventual second wife, passed along her own tuberculosis to her daughter Ludmila, then witnessed said daughter die before she croaked herself.  What a raw deal.

Up until now, I pitied myself a lot.  Felt bad that I’d been through my own gamut of unfortunate events.  But really, it was nothing like Katerina Stravinsky.

I feel a bit guilty, too, for using a work like “croaked” to describe her death.  I’m certain the onomatopoeia is right on, but sadly, I also have no doubt that her demise was prolonged, painful, and very messy.  As she lay in her bed, likely confined to bed for most of her final days, she must have soaked countless rags with spit and coughed-up blood.  Necessarily isolated, and yet still responsible for the death of her daughter, she must have lingered that final year in mental agony matching her physical pain. 

I’m struck by the cavalier nature of my initial reflection.  Is this because I can’t seem to wrap my head around the tragedy of her life?  Certainly, she’s not alone in this standing; every day, thousands of men, women, and children must suffer unimaginable horrors.  But that’s just it - they aren’t really unimaginable.  These horrors are fully real and present, imaginable by those of us who allow ourselves to go down that dark path of the mind’s eye.  No need for visual evidence even, just a quiet union of emotion.  It’s easy enough to come back, to open our eyes to the drawn curtains of morning, with the January sun peeking through.  A sigh of relief might escape between sticky lips and a quick rub to the forearms will liven up frightened and heavy limbs.

Because then it’s morning.  All the beasts of the past are sleeping again and there’s nothing to fear but fear itself.  All that panic may rush in again without warning and flash flood the chest, like consumption, until it can’t draw breath.  But panic won’t kill you, at least, it won’t stop your heart.  My doctor told me so.

Your heart keeps right on beating, right through the fear.  All the way to the last day.  As long as those beasts stay asleep (tiptoes and whispers, but look back, and yes, they’re there), I’ll smile a little because they’re not so frightening, really, purring and cuddled up against each other to stay warm. 

But I’ll kill them yet.