This is probably my favorite poem:
“Late Fragment” by Raymond Carter
“And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.”
Carter was a thinker, a writer, and a raging alcoholic. When he had a drink-induced seizure in his doctor’s office, the future seemed clear as crystal: keep this shit up and you’ll die. Six months tops. It was the turning point.
He lived at AA; stepped away from his old life, haunts, and friends – converting some along the way to to life “out of the drink”. It was never easy. He was 40 years old when he climbed out of the bottle and it wanted him back every damn day. When he was 50, his doctor (the same one in the same office where Carter had had his revolutionary seizure) broke the news to him gently that Ray had developed lung cancer from smoking and it had spread everywhere it could. Six months tops.
As Carter’s wife, Tess Gallagher, tells it, he took the news hard. “A half-hour later the phone rang. It was Ray. He was in a bar. ‘I didn’t drink anything,’ he said, ‘but I’ve ordered something. It’s still sitting on the bar.’ I took a breath and, like a hypnotist, told him ‘Just get to your car and drive straight home. I’ll be waiting in the driveway.’ He drove home, stopped the car before he reached the house, and got out to hold me, like a man clutching a life raft.”
Although cancer claimed his life, he prized the 10 years between his break with addiction and the end of his days. “Pure gravy” he called it. More life and love and happiness than he ever thought he’d have – than he ever thought he deserved. Gravy.
As I reflect on his “Fragment” and his life, I feel an affection for Raymond Carter – a kind of understanding. All that I have ever wanted in this life is to call myself beloved and to feel beloved on this earth. It seems easy enough to accomplish if you’re even the smallest bit lovable, yes? But there’s a trick to it: unless you can find your own tawdry self lovable, you may not be able to feel any of the epic amounts of love coming your way. It won’t matter how much They love you, you see, if you don’t love yourself.
So, as I consider making some essential changes – some to survive and some to thrive, I read Carter’s poem almost daily. I even went to the tattoo parlor yesterday and got the word “beloved” inked on the back of my neck under a red batwing heart … so that it marks me and I can see it – declare it – when I don’t feel it much.
Whatever your demons, however loved or unloved or apathetic about love you currently feel, everybody deserves gravy years, honey. Put the shit that’s killing you down and walk away from it. Just walk away and go straight home.
I’ll be waiting in the driveway.
