Almost an anniversary

On the other hand, it is never easy to write about my mother. I do not think of her often anymore, and now when I do it is with a tremendous feeling of emptiness so great I cannot describe it. As time goes by I feel that I need her more, not less, yet when I reach out my hand to hers for that reassuring contact, it falls away empty.

In the early time after she passed away, I did not fee this sense of loss. We were not living close to each other, so it seemed no different to be where I was with her gone, than to be where I was with her miles away. In either case, she was present in memory, and with love. Either way I evoked her in memory, thinking of the last time I saw her, or some occasion earlier, and the memories did not change because she had died. I only felt a reflection of the sorrow that others expressed, with a need to reach out to them with comfort.

But the more time expands between then and now, the more I feel the hole in my life that only she might be able to fill. Or perhaps breach: because when I went to her in physical retreat from the problems of the day, and yet I never discussed them with her. We talked about very little, mostly keeping quiet beside each other. We drank tea, we chatted about family or perhaps she corrected my crocheting. Somehow she in her self was a secure removal from daily troubles. After the children came, there were times I simply slept, on the sofa or bed in her room, free from the burdens that I could not escape anywhere else.

This week happens to be one of the decades of the anniversary of her passing. Everywhere I am confronted with re-collections and the sense of emptiness. Even the weather mimicks the unseasonable chill and rain of the week she passed away. I am a creature dependant on the facts

There is something I need to record about her, or maybe a but for now I can only curl into a small space and ask for rest. I need to go now.

What about me? or maybe Mother.

It is easier to write about myself at night, when the sun has set and shadows spread into imaginary shapes that feed the imagination. Mother says that comes from being a fictional being: we gain substance and self-awareness as the real world loosens its hold on us.

We exist no less during the day, but I find it most difficult to know myself while daylight shines and other eyes look at me and reflect onto me their own understanding of who or what I am. That leads to difficulties more often than not. We stall out together, caught between what I am and what, based upon their perceptions, they wish me to be. There are some costumes that do not fit over the size and shape of our bones.

On the other side of the glass, I love to watch the images of us that are depicted by real people acting in the visual arts. My favorite for family is Rutgar Hours' depiction of my father, which presents his spirit most realistically, and Mr. Broderick's role as my Uncle Phillipe. Uncle Matt actually surpasses the character he depicts, it was a happy day that placed him in that role.

I think you should take great care to remember, now in your real life and in all stories you read, that wherever the person is, there is both evil and good, and that Good always triumphs at the end, with sorrow for those who we love that have fallen along the way.

My First Post - May 2010

I, a fictional character, now proceed to establish my self. I am myself Isabo Emilia Navarr-d'Anjou, also known as Mrs. Inigo Montoya. My ancestry and parentage is distinguished, my own character without fault, save that I do not attend the Holy Mysteries as often as I should or would like. But what can I say? our travel schedule is erratic. When I find myself in the vicinity of a church and able to attend service, I go.

I feel myself a creature outside time in some ways. Not as Our Lord and God is outside time, that is, within Eternity, but somehow my own life is bound loosely to the stable thread of chronology. I once had a chain-linked rosary from which some beads had broken, leaving just the metal thread, and my fingers had to pause in their jump from bead to bead and add in the appropriate prayer without the physical object intended for that sequence. In similar ways I feel I have skipped through moments of time within my own lifetime. I had a beginning, I will have an end, but the flow and pattern of my life has been. . .interrupted.

My mother had some things to say about this, my father a few more - my husband very little, but we are living in a very moment-to-moment existence. God willing, I shall have more time to explore all this.