Upside Ann

I'm listening now to the sound of a chain saw ripping through a tree.  The tree in front of the house my parents built when they were first married.  The house I lived in for my first 9 years.  This maple tree - now at least 70 years old and visibly aging- was special to my mother.  Even in her last days she would lead me to the window to look at that tree, its trunk twisted and gnarled, and tell me about choosing it at the nursery.  "You don't want that tree!  Why would you want that tree?" the arborist asked.  "Look at the trunk.  It is twisted.  This tree here has a nice straight trunk."   And that is what my mother wanted.  A tree with character. Farewell dear tree.  If there is a rainbow bridge for flora, I am sure that Margie is waiting for you there to let you know that you were special and chosen... to once again picnic under your canopy. Wood Street Maple, 2026:  There is nothing special about this photograph...

 " Here is Sunday morning’s moon ushering my dear mother onto her next port. I will miss her every day but rejoice that she is free from suffering and, once again, united with her parents, her husband, and her daughter, Renee." 3/24/24. It was two years ago this week.  My mother fell on Saturday night.  The MRI suggested that she'd had a stroke before sustaining injury to her skull and brain in the fall.  Both sides of her brain were damaged.  She could speak to me before she was removed from the house to travel to the hospital.  She didn't want to go.  She wanted to be taken to her room.  When I saw her an hour later in the ER room, she could no longer speak.  I got a call about 4 AM telling me she had died.  Zupe and I drove to the hospice center to see her.  I wish I could have stayed with her to hold her hand, but I had Zupe with me.  After we said goodbye, we drove home and all the way I was led by this full moon. ...

 From "The Pleasure of My Company" by Steve Martin. It was not that I missed her; she was far from me by the time it was all over that our communications had become spare.  She lived in me dead or alive.  Even now, the absence of her letters is the same as getting them for when I have the vague notion that one is due, I feel the familiar sensation of comfort that I did when I held a physical letter in my hand. She lives in me dead or alive.  I'm still struggling with the horror that the mother who I carry is the one I didn't recognize - the new one - the one who was sad and afraid and didn't like me.  I hope and fear for the day that she steps aside for the funny, warm, supportive mother I spent most of my life thinking I could never live without her.  On that day that I welcome her back into my heart, I will break.