NOT ALONE
by Mildred K. Barya
There’s a message on my phone from my friend in India about a friend we share via Facebook who has died. My Indian friend wants to know if I am okay. At this point I’m thinking I’m all right. I log on Facebook only to find that the friend we share is Okla Elliott. I refuse to believe. It cannot be. Once more it is too personal, too too personal. I scream at death to stop, oh, stop, you have taken from me enough.
Okla Elliott.
I think of calling his phone, as if that would bring him back.
The summer of 2015 we shared a house in Ithaca. I was reading for my PhD comprehensive exams while at the same time participating in seminars at Cornell School of Criticism and Theory. We were in the same seminar group. The first day I arrived it was raining, so we shared an umbrella as we walked to the school and once we got to Cornell bookstore, Okla bought his own umbrella. Later we had coffee and Okla asked if I was interested in reading my poems at his book launch. He was generous to ask me; it was his book launch and he wanted me to read alongside him. I accepted, and he asked one other lady to read as well. After the launch and poetry reading we took pictures and once we got home we started a “poetry group,” perhaps as a welcome break from all the philosophy we were reading. Later he welcomed me to New American Press and spoke tirelessly of new projects he wanted to do. He was very much a doer, incredibly productive and accomplishing whatever he set out to do. I was always in awe of his energy, intelligence, and generosity. He was an unstoppable force, indefatigable in his literary pursuits. He was full of life as though he’d just been born, untarnished by life, as though he were already advanced in years, keenly aware that we live only once. There was a child and adult at work in him all at once. One weekend, still at Cornell, he convinced a large group of us to go dancing. The music was actually bad, but the vigor with which we danced was so memorable we couldn’t help but laugh at ourselves. When I decided that I was ready to go on the job market, Okla shared his application materials with me and carefully read my portfolio. He had just got his Assistant Professor position at Misericordia University, so his firsthand experience was invaluable. Without his feedback I don’t think I would have been confident enough to step out.
You can imagine my shock when I learned that Okla's spirit had left his body and he was no longer on this earthly journey to share his work with us. I was numb at first, and the more I read tributes from his friends on Facebook and other online sources, the more I continued to disbelieve. But it is said that disbelief is as much an act of faith as belief. Eventually, the new reality wins. And because love is pouring out from the four directions for Okla, I acknowledge that I’m not alone in my grief. In fact, it is not my grief but every writer, every poet, every scholar and student who has known Okla in some way. I wonder how his two sisters who raised him are feeling. He was only 39, yet even in that short life he wrote, published, and translated several works. In his honor I write the following takeaway points:
- Dedicate to art.
- Do everything you can in the name of creativity and love.
- There is no time even when you think time is exactly what you have.
- Any time now, any time.
- Embrace life and befriend death because both are inevitable guests to your house.
- Read experiential poets that comfort: Antonio Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez and Kabir.
- Touch people physically, enjoy the warmth of bodies while you still have a body
- Live each day as though it were your last. Some say, as if it’s your first—that. too works.
- The past, the future, they don’t matter because the present is what you can bank on.
- Think about incarnation, resurrection, formlessness/beyond form, spirit energy.
- Communicate to all you care about that you do care.
- Grieve and announce to your heart to beat again.
- Life is always changing.
- “Death is something we shouldn't fear because, while we are, death isn't, and when death is, we aren't.” Antonio Machado.
Rest in peace, friend.
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