The Honest Courtesan

Grace liked those small, fat notebooks.  She always kept several around, and used them for whatever she needed to write down, without any particular order.  Any given notebook might contain movies or tools she wanted to buy; rough diagram, sketches, and lists of parts for intended projects; things she encountered online when I wasn’t around that she wanted to ask me about later; things she wanted me to add to the grocery list; ideas for her D&D character; audiobooks she wanted to order; and just about anything else she felt should be written down.  Now, over the last couple of years she had developed a fondness for listening to Gregorian chants on her headphones while meditating; she even listened to them while getting chemotherapy.  So when I picked up one of her little notebooks Saturday before last, looking for one that was mostly empty so I could use it for something else, and discovered a page with five lines of Latin, I assumed they had come from a chant she liked.  Believe it or not, her Latin was actually better than mine, so I needed to look them up, starting with the one in the title above…which translates to “help me in my final condition”.  They were all lines from the Dies Irae, part of the traditional Catholic requiem mass.  And of course I immediately started crying uncontrollably, though the tears were not bitter.  Because even though we both knew she was dying for some time (though neither of us realized just how close it was), she had clearly come to accept it.  And perhaps discovering those lines, painful as it was in the moment and in recalling it now, will eventually help me to accept it as she did.