Against all odds, Nana's still holding on. They have her in a regular room, sedated with morphine, and they've said that today they'll remove the feeding tube. It's only a matter of time now, I guess. At least she's not in pain. I didn't go see her. Maybe I should have, but we visited on Mother's Day, and that's how I want to remember her. I've seen the tubes and the drug-dulled eyes before - I don't want to see her that way now. Perhaps that's selfish of me, but death with dignity ought to be free of the parade of people who circle like so many vultures. Besides, Momma will need me more afterwards than she does right now. So instead of making the trip, I spent the weekend in mindless movie watching interrupted by the occasional chapter of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil to try to keep my mind off things. We watched everthing from Robin Hood Men in Tights to LA Confidential, with a side order of Tomb Raider and Kill Bill. So now it's Monday, my brain is numb, and my first cup of coffee never tasted so good. But the e-mails are stacking up, so I guess it's time to get to work.
Here I stand again, speaking to an empty room. My thoughts aren't worth the cyberspace they would take up if I cared to tweet or post to Facebook, but here I stand anyway. I had no idea how long it had been since my muse had forced me to write. I used to write almost daily, poetry mostly, when I was younger and believed that someone cared what I had to say. I wanted to be e.e. cummings or T.S. Eliot or anyone who seemed to be so comfortable in his own skin to pour out his emotions onto a blank page. It took me a few years to realize that the writers who filled my pantheon of literary deities were not that comfortable after all, but wrote because not writing was more painful than the spilling of emotion. So I think I will take up my keyboard once more, wade out into the battle, and write.
Comments