Mom

On 10/02/2003 I was upstate with Rod looking after mom and, as we prepared a bath for her, she slipped away. I remember that outside it was beautiful. What I know of fall foliage will hinge on the golds of that day.

There was more to it than that - more pain and messiness. ALS is without sympathies, progresses relentlessly. In mom's case it swpet through her and had claimed her entirely within a year.

But once she's gone, it doesn't have her any longer of course. She goes immediately back to being ours and our memories (31 years) supercede the just one year that ALS had mom. Like a brief affair, we can sweep that one away and try to forget the mockery it made of her independence, grace and will.

But how to now remember my mom.
And Linds who's left too.

I know they're not all gone.
Some faith in me assumes they are together.

And, honestly, sometimes I'm not sure the reality of their absence here has quite reached me. They're still alive - never ever dead - in my dreams. They still have opinions, would weigh-in on matters if just given a voice.

So sometimes it's like the two most important women in my life simply stepped off stage and behind curtain. In the photo here - taken on Lake Van in Turkey - mom and Linds hold hands. Imagine that, like scuba divers, they just fell backwards together and so not visible but still there. They don't happen to be in this scene but will return for others. My jerry-rigged version of eternal being makes it bearable for me.

C