Upside Ann

 " 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. ...

 "I used to know him," Everett said on their way back to the car, pointing a curled finger at one of the headstones.  "He worked at the tannery out by the water tower.  Played the violin."  Becky looped her arm through his.  "Was he good?" "Better than me." "You play the violin?" "Nope," Everett said. The dead visit us in our dreams? Or do we just conjure them up out of grief or some other need and insert them into our subconscious.   "What was it like?" It took Mrs. Dodson a moment to answer. "I won't lie to you," she said with a shrug that was mostly performed with her thin brow, "dying was unpleasant.  But death? It's wonderful."

 It was good to see death as a release and a beginning, rather than a tragedy.

She was a small, angled sort of woman, the kind you'd look at and say, Now there's a woman with elbows. For everybody dead and gone, there is a next day for the rest of the world. We both agreed that there are things you know as a child you cannot know when you grow up, things you see, you can't see anymore.  I know, because I spent summers playing elves and fairies under a tree in my backyard, until the summer I went out there and could not understand how anyone could think an acorn was an elf.

 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. 

 THIS will be the book I send EVERYONE next year at Christmas. You probably noticed a lot of books that don't really seem like what you expect me to be reading.  They are part of the "Blind Date with a Book" Valentine event at our library.  This one I picked up immediately because it was labeled "Vampire Fiction".  (I suppose to contrast it with the more common "Vampire Non-fiction" you see all the time.)  NOT REALLY vampire fiction.  Sure there is a vampire, but she isn't really the protagonist - just the catalyst.  That being said, I love this book.  (FYI - it is a love story.  A story about being mortal.  About what being mortal adds to one's existence.  Obviously, it is about death.) More importantly, it is filled with absolutely delicious writing.  I have far too many to share - and yet, share I will.  Sit back.  Grab a cup of tea.  (I know no one is there.  Yet, still, I share.) "The building is old, b...

 Eventually I ask, "Aren't you afraid?" "Afraid?" Cyril answers.  "Of what? I was dead for billions of years before I was alive." "But... but it means you won't be here anymore.' "You won't get rid of me so easily, lad.  Haven't you heard what people say? We're made of stardust.  We'll all be hanging around for eternity."