"Such is life / Falling over seven times / And getting up eight." - Japanese folk poem

1. He told me she's leaking. I imagined it was her brain and the juice of her life was draining out of her. It's actually her lung - when the doctors sewed her up, hence the fevers.

2. Before the steroids, her left foot dragged when she walked.

3. She was upset over losing her hair, her eyebrows, but she wore the wig with a shy finesse, so I sometimes forgot what was beneath it.

4. I visited on Saturday and she had my stepfather pick the vegetables from the garden, her garden, the garden she built with her heart. She was too tired to pick the tomatoes.

5. I tried to lend her books, but she couldn't focus. I finally got her a book of country homes so she could look at the pictures like a pre-literate child.

6. In the year of financial dependence I call 2006, she's been supporting me while I've been stumbling through my ditches. I've never needed her more and dollars have little to do with it.

7. I must escort her up the stairs, watch as she decends.

8. In my irrational mind, there is no mortality of the mother. These are just setbacks. They'll stop the leak, they'll shrink the mass. There is no place for me in a motherless world.

08/11/2006

Posted on 08/11/2006
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