Proof of Life
BY FEATURED WRITER: JEN PASTILOFF
Ella Wilson, I Have Done Love, 2019.
PROOF OF LIFE
JENNIFER PASTILOFF | FEB 2022 | ISSUE 13
I have nothing to show for it
my friend said of her life
like she was dying in a hospital bed somewhere
her life to be sold by a real-estate agent
hurrying in heels
who couldn’t possibly show my friend’s life
without something,
anything to offer prospective buyers
because how would they know what they were getting into?
How would they know if it was worthy?
How would they know the value?
How would they know what had happened inside
since there was no proof of life?
We need something to show you exist
The agent tells my friend every day.
And even though, this listing: invisible
The agent: a pest, the whole thing: a scam.
My friend complies
as she feeds her cat
and makes sure there are no hair ties for him to choke on
like he did that time she rushed him to the Emergency Room.
She accepts
the imaginary agent’s stipulation,
bows her head in shame
as she touches her cat’s paw
to make sure he’s real.
And my friend, who was not dying at all,
(no more than we all do, every day)
she said again:
I have nothing to show for it
Like what?
I ask my not-dying friend.
My son on Tuesdays.
I think of this
It’s his sharing day at school.
Yesterday’s letter was O.
When we couldn’t immediately think of an O word
he found a tiny paper,
wrote my name is Ozzie,
and taped it over his stuffed bear’s heart,
now named Ozzie.
We used to call it Show And Tell
But now we live in the Show Show Show era
Where What do you have to show for it and
How are you going to stay relevant and
Prove that you matter and
Show me make it shiny make me want to like you and
Make me want to stay and
Make me want to want to be you
None of these words spoken aloud
but nonetheless, they are spoken
And we adhere to them like bots
algorithms where veins once were
curated hearts instead of the endocardium
so it’s no wonder we feel like we are dying
and I remind my friend
to breathe, drink water, to kiss her cat’s nose.
These are the things she has to show for it.
I show her Ozzie, tape on his bear heart,
and how my son was proud to only have this
to show for his life.
And it was not a small thing,
putting this guy into his backpack,
getting up in front of his kindergarten class
and sharing about his O word.
And yet, it is the small things, isn’t it?
That make us remember
how someone smelled long after they’ve died,
how happy we were that one summer in between,
how pain eventually forgets how bad it hurts.
We can put tape on our own bear hearts—
our own bare hearts
And we do not have to show for it.
We do not have to make the world understand
that we were here,
that we matter.
Jen Pastiloff is the best-selling author of On Being Human, as well as a public speaker, personal coach to quiet your inner a$$hole and creator of the Shame Loss movement. Jen is the founder of the literary website The Manifest-Station, with editor Angela Giles. She offers online and in person yoga classes, and has a podcast with Alicia Easter called What Are You Bringing? She lives with her husband and son in Los Angeles, likes coffee a lot and believes in the motto “Don’t be an a$$hole” (which is why she owns the URL). She’s working on her second book or so she says (but most likely she is bingeing Netflix).