My dear little
Piers,
° Slow motion. Thank goodness there was time for slow motion. Plenty of time.
° Tuesday afternoon I satinstitched over the mousebites in a silverblue damask tablecloth of Mother’s. It was the right kind of occupation.
° A phone call to her cousin, warned Sunday. More reminiscences. It was just the right thing.
° By nightfall, though I was still weepy, I had the sense that the invalid, dying Mother was now out of the way of the vital, beautiful Mother. For Time really is just a notion we have.
° Slept soundly.
° Wednesday I printed the fotorich bio, for the service. Her parents when young, the early deaths, the college days, the young mother, the musician. I cut the fotos off at age 30, folks’ memories can fill in after that.
° Headachy, from the eyestrain. I even took an aspirin next morning.
° Mother’s temperature, toward the end, had soared to an astonishing 107°. Hospice packed her in ice, the charge nurse administered tylenol by enema. Nobody remembered a worse fever. So that’s why the alertness last November, it was the beginning of this final infection, that’s why all those tests we just found out about two weeks ago, when the Medicare statement came.
° Dreamed of two chimneys floating over the house, my task was to carry masonry up the ladder to fill in to the ground. And yes, one of the chimneyshaped fotos in the bio was “floating” by a line; fixed it. Also dreamt erotically, there was a map of Lazio handinked inside my underwear. Normal dreams about normal, ordinary things. Good sign. No rattlesnakes, no dinosaurs.
° The difference between shock and surprise. My father died the third day inclusive after a fall; we were surprised, shocked, stunned. I remember that my sense of smell became so acute I could analyse the breath and sweat of all the visitors and tell what they’d eaten earlier in the day. It was incapacitating, it was appropriate to the level of the shock. Lettye had dizzy spells for years, fell into many a bush. Others just buy golden Cadillacs and get it over with.
° We were surprised by Mother’s death, but not shocked, or so it seems today. Nor had Daddy lost control of his investments and the conditions of his daily life--though it was imminent.
° The casket opened briefly--they’d remade the body to look the way she did before she began those last hard few days of fever and drought, I wonder if any of us is mentally strong enough to behold Death unmadeup?--and the family service done, the casket reclosed--my mother used to cringe at the comments she heard the old folks make after a viewing: “My, didn’t she look bad!” or “My, didn’t they fix her up like a picture, but that dress!”--the Visitation began.
° My father’s Visitation nearly sank me. I hadn’t slept for two days, my nerves and temper were not at their sweetest, and the stench of folks’ breath and bodies, not to mention their ideas, was unbearable, if they just knew what cats know.
° My mother’s Visitation was so pleasant, it was only five hours later, as my stomach began to gripe for lack of food, that I realised it was all over. And, having stood the entire time, all my blood was in my feet.
° Reunions with cousins not seen in twenty years. Reunions with good friends. A steady stream of folks I didn’t know from Adam. Confidences piled upon confidences: confessions of misdeeds in elementary school, unburdenings of caregivers at the nearend of their ropes, recollections of the physical details of parents’ deaths, garden talk, software talk. No backhanded slaps at Mother (this is unusual, funerals mark open season on the Dead). A forehanded slap at me for having alienated Mother’s patronage from a local store. Sorry, better avocados at the chain.
° Tired, calm.
° Friday, another warm and sunny day, unnaturally warm and sunny. The jasmine, autumn cherry, parrotia, hazelnuts, hellebores, all the little late winter weeds are blooming. I sit still all morning and satinstitch the last napkin of the blue damask set. Fold the bios. Time to make crescents, but time better spent in not making them.
° Car wash down--but there is the couple that backhanded me last night, I’ve forgotten, they’ve forgotten, the social fabric satinstitched over.
° Noon dinner at the church. Everyone sunny and chatty. The funeral. I tremble a little at the first notes of “Ich ruf’ zu dir”, then I settle into a voluptuous appreciation of the chiffing rohrfloete, the remarkably lovely oboe (this addition was thanks to your timely advice). Lettye sings “Michael.” Charlene accompanies anglican style (this too recalls your influence, though you never knew it). Very decent homily. "Beulah Land," that spaced out text from the brief period of Relaxed Episcopal mysticism at the turn of the last century. Lettye sings “Repton.” I had forgotten the bit about “our right minds,” but very apt. Surpassingly sweet. I remember the first time I heard you play it. I remember a ferocious female afterwards affirming that “that’s what I want sung at my funeral.” Another victory of yours that meant everything to me.
° The sabreslash that is the first statement of the Louis Couperin Chaconne, then off to the cemetery. Clouds and a whippy wind for fifteen minutes during the interment, then sun and calm again.
° The Aftervisit with Lettye’s aunt and sister, more happy past.
° Then my friends were gone, and I was out of my element, “Leggeroless,” as someone once remarked, and eventually I went home.
° Mother was almost entirely absent from her funeral day, we were all too busy and chatty to think of her. And that was a good thing. For Time, as I do say, is only a notion we folks do have.
° With love, affection, and gratitude, Giac.
