Passages

This would have been my mother's 79 birthday. It is hard to believe that she has been gone from us (my siblings) for ten years. When you loose mom it is at times a real struggle not to live, or move on, it is the memories of those times that show up in ones mind.


You had to know Belva Katherine, she was a woman of substance and style, before it was cool to be so. in fact if you did not know better one would have thought she was a southerner rather than a mid west woman. She had an elegance about her and she had a laugh that infected everyone she met. Such was our mother.


Passages are like the roman god Janus: they us give an unique advantage, we can see forward as well as backward. Thus, we have the ability to reassess or confess life and our part in it. Passages are full of mistakes and positives; life is the ultimate balance. We strive to make good choices and bad ones always show up. This is why we have the curse of memory: the need to see truth other worldly, to put on the face of spin to make best light shine, when it blinds us.

Death reveals true life and light. There is no way to protect or pretend; no spin control, or words to soften the death blow. It is then what it is... over and done. Like the realization in Sudden, last summer when Aunt Violet faces the truth of Sebastian's, homosexuality and her incest, causing her to flee in madness a protection of truth. So we face the lobotomy of real life as we see passages of days, months, and years, older than we were yesterday, youth spent in the wicked pursuit of dreams deferred or denied, passages.

As I celebrate the memory of my mother I am reminded that others celebrate a passage. While mom impacted on lives in a small circle, another impacted the world. One loved locally the other international; one a teacher the other a lion rather a lionized personality given in death while in life treated with scorn. On suffered the passing unnoticed saved for those who loved her and she was loved with fervor. One dies in obscurity the other passes in the glory of myth buried by growing myths that take on a life of their own, but have the same sad ending: the truth is written by the winners in life and death.

So we will mark these passages in our own way and smile at the memories in our grief. Some will be private others public, some in quiet others in the noise that is Americana; some in the sharing of memories only one shares, while others will evaluate current events decoding to construct. All have purpose yet share one thing: loss the great equalizer of life, the end of life journeys. Later