I ordered flowers for her today, and it nearly killed me.
The picture shows how Helen looked when she was very pregnant with me back in Bryan, Texas in 1945. That shot always reminds me of my sister Mary, actually. Not unusual, I suppose–I must look at lot like her myself! But Jesus, how the time has flown, how everyone fell flaming from the skies. Walking wounded, all of us. You can read it in our faces. So near and yet so far…
I’m about to be just two years younger than my father was the year he died, drowning in his own juices after a short but vicious bout with lung cancer. (1986?) I think about my own demise now, how could I not? Sometime soon I’ll have to go to Tucson and clean up one hideous, complicated mess with buzzards circling overhead for me. That tends to concentrate the attention, just like seeing what I look like in the mirror. My wife knows what I’m speaking of, of course. How could SHE not? And yet this is a universal experience, walking, walking, down the same old road. That’s why it doesn’t really matter that we don’t live in a mansion yet or have a lot of dough. We look at each other almost every day and promise out loud to “BE HERE NOW!” You wouldn’t believe how much that helps.
I hope you have a good week, Mother. I’m very grateful that you gave me birth and did the best you could to set me on my own path through the world. Let everything else go, if such a thing is possible. Just let it go, and know I think about you often, no matter what.
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