Taos Writer

Let Go and Let Joe

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 21:10:03 GMT

My friend, Joe, is dying. Outside the retirement village’s window, cars roll along Camino de la Placitas, their drivers oblivious to the beauty of the reflected sunshine off the car ahead or the generous wave of another motorist signaling for them to go first.

I sip my Americano and nibble at the chocolate cake I brought for Joe. Now that he’s done eating, its left for me. Sweet and bitter, oily and earthy—a perfect combination.

Earlier, I positioned Joe in his bed so he wouldn’t choke. I stuffed the pillow behind his head, angled his chin towards his chest, and cleared the way to his belly. All those years as a nurse have finally come in handy. I spooned the cake into my friend’s mouth. Held the coffee cup’s straw to his chapped lips. What could be better than a couple of paisans sharing coffee and cake on a Sunday afternoon?

Joe mumbles gibberish.

I say, “You’re making no sense.”

He says, “I know. It’s like someone else is in my head.”

I say, “I’m not afraid of your dying.”

He says, “Thank you.”

Joe was a writer and would sometimes help me with an essay’s final lines. A writer can ruin an entire piece with a crappy ending. He and I would spend hours with our butt bones sore from sitting on the white benches of Manzanita Café. We’d twist syntax and fling phrases. He’d tap his fingers on his thighs, like fleshy drumsticks on the skin of his jeans. He made sure the rhythm of those last words were right. He drank his coffee black. He listened for a melody that he alone could hear.

Joe had picked a day to die. March 14. I tell him that’s the same day Edward Abbey died, an odd piece of trivia I read off the internet earlier that morning. He laughs. Good writer, he says. He tells me he wants to be surrounded by his friends, his cat, Zeno, and his dead wife, Sally’s artwork. Then he goes back to mumbling, arguing with his mother, his grandmother. I am a bystander. The traffic along the road has quieted.

I say, “Joe, you might beat yourself to that punchline of March 14. It is February 23, and you, my friend, are dying.”

He says, “I know.”

Sometimes when I’m reading a story, I turn the page, expecting more, only to find it’s over. I’m greedy. I want something good to go on forever. Joe’s not around to help me figure out this essay’s final lines.

I wait to pull out from the parking lot onto Placitas. I let several cars go by. I consider getting another cup of coffee, another piece of cake, even though it’s dark, and the caffeine and sugar will keep me up all night. I circle Taos Plaza, cruise past Mazanita café, revisit those times when Joe and I hammered out endings together. On the corner is World Cup, open and empty. What the fuck? I think. More coffee, more cake. I don’t need to sleep.

That night, my dog curls her spine and poops underneath the olive trees while I stare at the stars. My tongue races across my teeth. A whisper of mocha. There.

Halloween 2019

Chewing the Cud on my 63rd Birthday

jeanmaries@rocketmail.com (Jean-Marie Saporito) — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 21:40:00 GMT

On my fourth Bumble date with the man in the zoom rectangle on my monitor, I slip and mention that I'm obsessed with death. Not exactly the light banter I intended, so I giggle coyly. I'm not sure a woman past sixty can achieve coyness, but I hope he thinks I'm joking. I've learned words like death or suicide can silence a room, and such topics while dating should probably be sandwiched between the first kiss and the STD testing.

I look at my screen and my cheeks are flushed, but he's smiling. He says, "I know about your obsession. I read your stories online. Someone always dies."

I'm flattered and defensive. Mr. Bumble read my work! But really. "Not every story," I say and mentally flip through the card catalog of my online work. I'm having trouble recalling what's on the internet when he interrupts. "Well, not every story. There's one where the character doesn't die but gets maimed." Busted.

I suppose my obsession began in the hallowed halls of Boston College, where the faculty drummed into our eighteen-year-old heads a patient trifecta to be avoided at all costs. Shock, coma, death. Just hearing those words brought on the urgency to pee. Would I be able to intervene before the dreaded flatline? After I graduated, I specialized in critical care nursing, and if you rolled into my unit, my job was to keep you alive unless your status changed to a DNR.

Do Not Resuscitate. Now that I'm firmly in middle-age (yes, I plan to live to 126), I've been considering under what circumstances my proverbial plug should be pulled. For those interested, there's not actually any plug that gets pulled. We turn the machines off but leave them plugged in. For a person who's witnessed her share of the multitude of ways one can take their last breath, there are plenty of details I'd like to control.

From the time I was a little girl, I wanted to control people, places, and things—the Vietnam war, whether we got a family dog, the boys pummeling snowballs at me on my walk home from St. Robert's. Over the years, I've whittled away most of my control illusions. I'd just like to have agency over my own life. And death.

Out of the many public figures who've recently died, Thich Nhat Hanh's passing struck a bell. I first heard of the Buddhist master in 1987 while living in Tucson. A friend invited me to watch videos of his talks playing at a massive Pepto-Bismol-colored monastery of Benedictine nuns. In a darkened basement with a few other laypeople and a couple of nuns dressed in their habits, we sat on metal folding chairs and though I don't remember the Vietnamese monk's words, I do remember the gentle tone of his voice—comforting and capacious. For forty years, I've intermittently read Thay's work wanting to emulate his kindness and learn how to greet difficult emotions and fears like they are friends. This is a quote from his book, No Death, No Fear.

This body is not me; I am not caught in this body, I am life without boundaries, I have never been born, and I have never died. Over there the wide ocean and the sky with many galaxies all manifest from the basis of consciousness. Since beginningless time I have always been free. Birth and death are only a door through which we go in and out. Birth and death are only a game of hide-and-seek. So smile to me and take my hand and wave good-bye. Tomorrow we shall meet again or even before. We shall always be meeting again at the true source, always meeting again on the myriad paths of life.

I've come to believe that even if one is conscious at the very end of their life, they aren't experiencing the captivity of their bodies. I swim, lift weights, eat green leafy vegetables—I want my body to serve me well until my final days. Eventually, my body will become an impediment. Then I will leave. But how and to where?

Shortly after Thich Nhat Hahn's death, I saw a local art exhibition titled "Remote Possibilities." On a large LED screen, thousands of pinpoints of light endlessly twinkled, sparkled, and exploded on a black background. This mesmerizing experience gave me the sensation of hurtling through a galaxy, and I slipped into a meditative state—peaceful and fearlessly flying. Maybe this is what it will be like when I transition out of this world and into the next.

With the plan of living to 126, I've got several more years to prepare for my death. Besides writing my eulogy and creating the Grateful Dead song list to be played at my services, perhaps I'll memorize Thich Nhat Hahn's words, so smile to me and take my hand and wave good-bye , to chant in those final moments. Or maybe I'll just listen for the gentle sound of his voice.

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Baby Jesus, the Coen brothers, and a suicide

jeanmaries@rocketmail.com (Jean-Marie Saporito) — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 17:18:41 GMT

This is a subtitle for your new post

I grew up Catholic in Queens, New York, and baby Jesus was part of this season. He would be born, and we would miraculously be saved. I remember trundling the two blocks to my local parish church, with my hands shoved in my wool coat pockets to attend midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. The pews were jammed, Mrs. Ayer's soprano singing filled the voluminous arched ceilings, and the priest in his flowing gold and white robes swung the thurible, anointing the parishioners with frankincense and myrrh vapors. The solemn mystery of this night seemed worth the cold I'd subsequently catch, ruining my Christmas vacation.

Taos is far from Queens, and I’m no longer a practicing Catholic, but I still love the mystery inherent in tradition. In years past, as darkness descended on Christmas Eve, I'd cram into the San Geronimo Church at the Tewa Pueblo for vespers that concluded with a procession through the ancient adobe village plaza. Men in traditional garb, carrying a statue of a dark-skinned Virgin Mother, lead the way amidst towering bonfires that billowed smoke into the crystal cold mountain sky. Church attendees followed behind singing hymns, and though I didn't know most of the words, I would join in when I could.

The Pueblo has been closed since the beginning of the Pandemic, and holiday gatherings aren't what they used to be. In 2020, the tradition of a family and close friend, socially-distanced viewing of a Coen brother's movie began. Why these filmmakers? Strange times call for strange measures?? But who doesn't love the quirky Coen brothers and their filmography should outlive CoVid.

Unfortunately, my younger brother did not. At the end of last year, this tradition was interrupted by his suicide, another type of causality from this virus. The weeks that followed his death were a blur, the trauma freezing my senses, and though I grieved, my numbness mitigated the depth of my sorrow.

Coming up on the year anniversary, I've thawed and am surprised by how the loss feels more intense. The longer I experience this grief process, the more I understand I'm living in a mystery. I don't know how to do this, and from what I've learned from Golden Willow retreat center, there's no "right" way. Make it up as you go along.

This season there will be no church, no Pueblo, but we will watch a Coen brother’s film. Lady Macbeth will be released on Christmas Day, and in this way, though I've never met Ethan and Joel, I feel a bond with them. But I won't venture into a crowded movie theater. Instead, my family and I will watch something at home. And I bet you might guess which film that will be.

A Community of Nurses

jeanmaries@rocketmail.com (Jean-Marie Saporito) — Thu, 25 Nov 2021 15:35:53 GMT

At the beginning of the Pandemic, I read accounts of what was happening behind the smooth swoosh of hospital doors. What I read wasn’t from mainstream media. Nurses were posting. Social media had connected me with many of my former colleagues and now became a place for some to tell their stories. They wrote of meager supplies of PPE, grueling hours, and the worst shift of their lives every time they clocked in.

I’ve been a critical care nurse for most of my career, and though I've been in education for the last six years, I hadn’t forgotten. When I read the posts, I could easily imagine that gnawing feeling a nurse gets when she’s had an exposure that could result in an infection. She wonders how much sick time she has, if she might infect her family, and if she'll die one of the gnarly deaths that she's been witnessing all too often and in excruciating detail.

Now, almost two years into this hell and with the numbers climbing, I don’t see many posts, but I think of those nurses. How might they be supported? Besides being a nurse, I am a writer. Many of my stories are based on those incidences that have stuck with me. It’s an established belief that expressing oneself and having those who understand bear witness has incredible health benefits. The Nurses Writing Circle is a place to come together as nurses to give voice to our stories.

Too many books?

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 21:18:53 GMT

"I should have known the relationship was over when he said I had too many books."

JMS

Books inhabit every room of my house: stacked on tables, crammed into shelves, steadying the wobbly legs of a table. I have to have them near me, I never travel without them, and although they might remain unread during a vacation, one never knows when a book is needed. I admit Infinite Jest by DFW intimidates me, but I have it handy if I need to hurl it at an intruder's head. As I write this, Flannery O'Conner's Mystery and Manners is within arm's reach, Tara Branch's Radical Acceptance is on a footrest, and face down on the table where I teach my writing workshops is Annie Dillard's The Writing Life. That's the reason I keep my books. I reference them to illustrate craft techniques with my students, but also when I have a question about my project. When I was considering a multiple point-of-view story at the early stages of my novel, I pulled The English Patient, There There, and An American Marriage from my bookshelves and found my way. My books are my literary lineage.

My former grad school advisor, Doug Glover, used to quote one of his former professors by saying,

"Literature is an encyclopedia of technique." Pithy instructions for a writer.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. What books have been important to you? What are you reading now? And, if you need a book recommendation for any reason, I’m happy to help.