J.B. STONE/JARED BENJAMIN - CALL OF THE NIGHTINGALES

J.B. Stone/Jared Benjamin is a neurodivergent performance writer from Brooklyn, now residing in Buffalo. He is the author of the Micro-Chapbook, A Place Between Expired Dreams And Renewed Nightmares (Ghost City Press 2018). His poetry, reviews, and prose have appeared in Crack the Spine, Maudlin House, Occulum, Empty Mirror, Gravel, Five :2: One, and elsewhere. He is also the Reviews Editor at Coffin Bell Journal.

Call of The Nightingales
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“When I die please don’t turn my death into a wedding day,” my Grandpa Lenny pleaded. 
    
I don’t think any of us truly know our final hour; we can only recall the time of others we see pass. My Grandfather’s time was at 2:30 A.M., behind a bleach-white curtain on the 5th floor room at Kings County Hospital. I was there to watch his final gaze to the fluorescent light suspended above, the last set of ears to hear his moans, as he regaled his final wishes onto me. He asked me to take a pen and notepad from the end table and jot down instructions along with his signature. A last minute addendum to the post-mortem arrangements he wanted. 

I kind of understood the whole final wishes spiel, even in a rushed scenario. There aren’t enough people on this planet who want to think about death let alone invest in the impact they leave following it. His request was a weird, yet beautiful idea. He requested in the notes, a burial in the woods of Fire Island. It was the area from his childhood that brought him the most joy. A place where he would look at the starlight while watching the fireflies buzz and nightingales fly. He didn’t want a 10,000 dollar coffin, surrounded by weeping friends adorned in black silk and garb, in a funeral home profiteering over his exploited and embalmed corpse. He preferred the plot that gave life to his childhood.

The family gathered the following morning on the precious L.I. shoreline. Aunt Ruth; Uncle Marty; Great-Great Uncle Harold; Cousins Gene, Joel, and Jakob; my Sister Janna; Mom; Dad: most of the family was present and accounted for. Many of us were still in the grips of mourning. As we submerged his body into the resting place in the heart of the island’s coastal woodland, it was at a peculiar time, yet fitting time; 2:30 AM. 

The twilight gleamed brighter than a shooting star that evening. As the light grew brighter and brighter, it morphed into an echo, the echo sounded a somber song, and the song transcended into a sight. The sight wormed smokescreen fronts into the blind, pale air and for a second, amid the poorly visible bog mist, we all could’ve sworn we saw his ghost rising from the Atlantic peat, bidding us farewell. 

Maybe it was our grief, maybe our minds summoning a spirit we wanted to see, and not what is actually there, or maybe we underestimated the mystic strength of human memory. The tremendous will of collective faith when a group of mourners are able to turn piles of dust into flowerbeds of bloom. A unified willpower, so strong it can only come from desperate hearts, resurrecting rotting flesh, exhuming a fallen spirit. A phenomena conjured by our own imagination. A vision forged by one last attempt at reconciliation, even if it was only one night.


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