Untitled--5.

5.

I wanted this to be kept secret because I didn’t want people to know about our rituals. There is something more sacred about a person’s passing not being told about somehow. Especially because it is only women of our blood left now. It is less medical, less meted out. With Ticu we had markers of time. Three months. Do this, then this is the next step. With you it seems that we might not know. You remember little pieces of things. Moments. Words, names, sometimes who someone is in relation to you. That is the core of our understanding.

But it feels wrong not to talk about it, because you were wife and mother, and somehow we have not yet learned to praise such important work. This was your work. You could have done more too, but what is the use in speculating? First, you married a man who was unfaithful. You told all of us, so that we would remember. Now your life is marked out by routines and Jimmy Stewart movies. I wonder how you watch the movies. Do you recall when you first saw them; are they reminding you of something that you’re remembering? Or because of what you no longer remember, are you watching them all for the first time, delighted in Stewart’s all-American heroism? I want to throw away the clock.

We mark the time with rituals. Bathroom, food. I wonder if these are ways in which you remember the few things you remember now. And again, the movies. Let’s stay in for the movies. Let’s shut in in in in in in hospice for the movies.

But I will be back here again someday with someone else. The time will come when I will be the one who has to worry about all these arrangements. Bedtime is coming, and you have to go soon. I will have to be leaving, too.