Yesterday an old and dear friend of mine died. That is not a good way to describe the death of this elderly woman who chained smoked and lived to be 94 years with never a minute of senility going through two health conscious husbands in the process. I know there was no senility because I had the opportunity to visit with her a week before she died, gratified by the recollection that she was ready for death. She didn't welcome it, but she knew it was coming and had grown tired of putting off this third wedding from a suitor who would not be put off.
I was close enough to her sons and the timing was right so that I had the opportunity to provide what solace I could, coffee and donuts in this case, and to sit in the room with the corpse that was not yet room temperature. It was much like looking at a photograph, much of the vibrancy of this person's life still there, though her eyes which were sharp like a hawks, rather than tender, were closed.
Those whose mothers die in childbirth or shortly thereafter have it the worst. There is nothing I can say to them. Those with abusive mothers are not too far behind, although only those who are criminally abusive fall into this category. I can only provide perspective to those who had parents for a long time or those like me who at a tender age lost their mother. This is only important for this post because now, for the first time, these two elderly grown men are truly motherless, and in their case orphans. Other people I know have lost parents, who I also knew, this week. This week seems to be particularly heavy with death. But this one, being so close, and observed with such directness of corpse and proximity to the aggrieved stands out; noting, of course, that death is an illusion just as life is, but being illusory it is still death.
This woman, when my mother died, extended every courtesy to me. I see now that while the opportunity to provide more was there, it was too much work for someone with such a full life and I was not an orphan or destitute in the way that might have called on her higher instincts. And yet the home cooked meals and the moments when I could watch her being the matriarch of her family with the always present (what's the word for that, ubiquitous) lighted cigarette is fixed in my mind even though several decades separated the last cigarette from her death.
As I said, she had made an uncomfortable peace with death and perhaps that was what brought this to my mind this morning.
I was out when it was still cool, almost uncomfortably so. Sitting looking at my gilded prison, teh grounds which I feel compelled to keep up as if this justifies my attempts not to escape. The peace of it in the morning before anyone was awake, the sun only high enough to light the top of the towering magnolia in the next yard, my own yard being so immense that only those tree tops give evidence to the surrounding neighborhood on quiet mornings. The early morning light was golden, as it is known to be by photographers of still and moving film and even now it is being replaced with a more harsh daylight they try to capture in certain light bulbs but which does not pass through so much atmosphere which cleanses it of the harsher wavelengths of light, like the sand removes particles from the flow of the water in the pool. The pool only retains the hint of green and by next week perhaps it will be crystal clear, but the clarity of the green somehow seems a more pure color than the blue it is supposed to have.
The quiet of the morning lingers, but I know soon it will give way and the peace will be shattered by the demands of life.
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