From: Natalie@yabbs
To: all@yabbs
Subject: This is a long one
Date: Wed Mar 30 15:17:44 1994

OCTOBER 31, 1991--6:28 A.M.

"Wake up! Wake up!"
"Huh? Go away, I've got two minutes."
"Something's wrong with Mum, 
the paramedics are here!"
I sit up and reach for my glasses,
all the while rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
"What are you talking about? Maybe she's 
just sick."
We wait in my room, hte blue room,
I notice all the books and papers on the floor.
The digital clock silently ticks away the minutes.
My father enters, grief on his face.
"Girls,
your mother...your mother
died
sometime last night."
I'm numb, I have no feeling, it's been
shut off.  We're told we don't have to go to school,
but I know what will happen (relatives trying to make me feel better),
so I go anyway.  Everyone says they're sorry,
such a stupid thing to do, what did they do?
Nothing.  It's my mother who should be
apologizing.

Just the night before I remember her alive
at my choir concert.  She was laughing and talking with
her friends and my friends and their moms and just everyone.
She had a good time.  She said so, just before she
went to bed and after she told me that she loved me.
For the last time. 
No one expected her to die, she was only
forty-eight.
But she did.

The first viewing was Saturday
two days later.  The family was there , supporting us,
me and my sister.
We walk in.
The casket's on the other side of the room.
With trepidation I approach and
my numbness disappears, replaced by anger and betrayal and mostly sorrow.
My mother is in the box, cold  dead  gone.
It doesn't even look like her.
She didn't do her hair like that, combed sttraight back like a
pro coach, maybe Ditka or Riley.
And the expression on her face wasn't hers, it was
George Washington with his wooden teeth.
I break down.
I begin to accept.
I live again.
She would've wanted it that way.

One year, ten months, and fifteen days.
I'm still haunted.
The memories won't fade.
I turn around, expecting to see her,
expecting to hear her voice, full of humor
with it's thick Boston accent.  I can't even remember it.
I look in her purse.  I find the concert program.
Now I can tell her.
I love you, Mum.


Natalie