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."
A late fragment written by Raymond Carver shortly before his death. It was found on a crumpled piece of paper on his desk that was nearly thrown away by accident. Now, it's the epitaph on his grave: six perfect lines that in the end are all any of us want.
GRAVY
ReplyDeleteNo other word will do. For that’s what it was. Gravy.
Gravy these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. “Don’t weep for me,”
he said to his friends. “Im a lucky man.
I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure gravy. And don’t you forget it.”
Raymond Carver