I feel terrible today. At sometime this afternoon a black dog crept up behind me and now he stays at my heel no matter what. I don’t have the will to shoo him away. I have to lie to people: “Yes, I’m fine.” I’m not fine; I’m in a low. I don’t know if I am coping. What the fuck is coping? I’m scared, I’m alone, I miss my mother. I want her back. Please, someone bring her back. Just one more year, that’s all. Just one more Christmas. Just one more telephone conversation. Please, someone take away the pain. It’s burning inside me and I think it’s slowly turning into anger. But I have no one to feel angry with, except myself. No one loves me as much as she did, no one ever will, and that’s a fact.
Blog
-
Vola Wilson
My mother was my home: the stale odour of the room in which she would sit and smoke while watching television, sipping Tia Maria; the piles of un-ironed washing in the hallway, because, as she might point out, it will still be there tomorrow; a greasy pan left on the hob, waiting for Dad to wash it before bed. To my knowledge she never threw out an empty shampoo bottle or newspaper, and there are still things at the back of the pantry that date from my early teens. She kept her purse in her shoppping bag, prefered silver to gold, and would not countenance pasta.
My mother had a unique way of yawning. She would inhale in the normal way, but on exhalation she would produce a descending scale of notes not unlike a sarcastic laugh. I remember being rebuked at infant school for attempting to immitate it. “But that’s the way my mum does it”, I said. That didn’t wash with Miss Smith.
She takes a few of my secrets with her. And, although I’m not embarrassed to divulge them, I will remain silent because they are hers to keep.
A couple of hours ago I flicked through my photo collection, picked out a suitable snapshot and slid it into the photoframe I received last Christmas. Mum stands in pasture at the bottom of Malham Cove in the Yorkshire Dales. That was when she had frizzy hair and enormous glasses. She is smiling broadly – proof that she is happy. She is flanked by sheep, and is wearing totally inappropriate footwear. -
‘s mum
I have sad news to convey. I awoke this morning to a text message from Robert, friend of many of you, and sometimes writer for bullpencatcher.com, telling me that his mother died at 10:10 GMT today. As many of you know she had been recovering from a several-month stay in the hospital after having an allergic reaction to medication for gout that caused her to lose close to 70% of the skin on her body. She was recovering well from the reports I had been receiving from Robert. When I talked with Robert on Friday of last week, he told me that she was going into the hospital for treatment of the skin on her eyes, not a simple and easy procedure, but not one thought to be incredibly dangerous either. Last night I recieved a call from him during which he told me that his father had called earlier in the evening to tell him his mother had turned for the worse and the doctors predicted she would only make it, at most, another week. The loss of her skin had made her very susceptible to bacteria. A staphylococcus (Staph) infection had entered her body and made its way to her heart where it was destroying one of her heart valves. Her heart was, for all intents and purposes, pumping blood back on itself. Robert told me that he and his father had decided not to request more life support once she started to slide. His father told him of the plans he would make for the funeral. Robert was planning to leave Oxford today to go up to Yorkshire to see his mum, perhaps for the last time.
This morning’s message said simply, “My mum died at 10.10 this morning. Could you let people know?”
Keep Robert in your thoughts for the coming days as I imagine they will be difficult ones for him. Please feel free to post comments here if you want.
To paraphrase Tony in The Up Series, talking of his family, “I love them all, all equally, except mum, who I love more, because if the family is a tree then mum is the root.”
Robert’s Entries during his mother’s sickness:
Intensive Care
Small Mercies & Little Miracles -
Weather patterns
It was about then that the sky turned black, even blacker through the tinted office windows. Black like ink clung to the skyscrapers downtown. The occasional pop of light added to the noirish aspect of the afternoon. All systems come to a halt. I want my mother. Wish to be at home. Not that home, but home. Michael and I riding out through the trails to the lake. can’t even have a cigarette. It’s too dark. Couldn’t find the match to the tip. I fear that the atmosphere may turn me black too. That just walking in it. To get to my car to get to the airport where the flight will not be on time, jets all covered in black, ink. Will we drink black drinks. It so scary its boring. Then a lady in a pink sweatshirt struts by. How does she stay pink. Seems like petroleum products could be the answer. The phones are off the hook. People are calling from the north to tell of devastation. Calling from places like Cleveland and Blue Ridge. They tell us the whole place is black. Like an oil tank leak. Not fish this time. Not furry seafarers. This time it has come for us. Are we what we eat? Have we too become polluted? Is that the reason the sky is black? The jets can’t take off? Let’s call of all Earth Day activity… due to the weather. Let’s send the last dog from the pen to the executioner’s chamber. I’ll give him up too.
Was playing: Heroin byLou Reed & The Velvet Underground -
Chapter Three
Cock as big as a block. Today’s modern parenting. I drive by those neighborhoods. Who’d’ve thought there are so many strollers. So many different kinds. So many ways of getting a baby from here to there. Oh, and Maria. I guess my little dick couldn’t plant a seed far enough in there. BABY CRAZY! Oh, I guess with a pipe like that a man could do a lot of damage. Plant a seed good. Change all of the plumbing in the house in one visit. Oh, I hate that letter. I hate that it still sits there on the window in the kitchen. I wasn’t baby crazy. Maybe that’s the problem. Told her that when dad left I became the man of the house. Had been a man of the house since I was 12. Being a man of the house is for the fucking birds. How did I get like this. Tommy was supposed to be here. It was supposed to be our night out. How did I get like this. I just wanted to have some fun, like fishing, see what turns up. They are always more comfortable when there are two and the second is you. Fine with not being the man of the house. Hell, it’s a rental anyway. What’s a rental for raising a kid. Besides my sperm wouldn’t take anyway. those drunk little fuckers are so confused. Looked at them once when I was 14 under a microscope, jacked off on a glass slide. Christmas present. Wow! Hard to imagine how they could do damage. Just makes you feel nasty. Fuck that job. Fuck this job. Hell, how hard is it to live… just live. It’s like twelve voices yelling at each other in here now. Hard to handle all of this noise. What the fuck happened? WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?
“Last call. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
“Fucking original, man!”
The pool table is empty. The couple at the corner booth gets up and walks out. It’s just me and Curtis.
“Where’d Emma go?”
“Well, you nodded, started babbling. Friends finished the pool game, so She left with them,” Curtis said.
I see how this ends.
“You want to do a shot with me?” Curtis asks, “I’m off the clock now.”
I didn’t think I wanted to, but he’s off the clock.
“You might want to check that napkin in your jacket pocket when you get home. She left you a note,” says Curtis, “You want me to call you a cab?”
“I reckon.”
Was playing: Anytime Soon byRachel’s -
Visitation
My parents have just left, heading back to North Carolina by way of any roadside arts/crafts stores. The faucet in the kitchen doesn’t splatter all over the toaster anymore. You can shower with reasonable assurance that the water pressure will be strong enough to cut the lather off of your body. I can indicate left turns without the fear of inattentive crashing into me from behind, and my car doesn’t groan anymore during the left turn. There are cosmos planted in a small window box out front. The grill is silver and clean. The futon is stripped and back in place. There are TV dining trays in the living room with classic country LP covers decoupaged on them.
-
Breaking fluff
‘Goldilocks’ Okay, so I am sitting at work today, stuck writing code, and all of the world seems to be worried about the fact that local news anchor Brenda Wood has “gone blonde.” I mean really? Is this news? We are to publish a story about her change in hair color. I am to wait with baited breath to get that story up on the web site as soon as it breaks. We are running several before and after photos for comparison of the “going blonde” process, and we are running a poll to ask the general public what they think of Brenda “going blonde.”
-
Chapter Two
“Hey Curtis! What do you think this chick will look like? He says she’s an auditor. Came into the store to take a look at the books… end of the beginning of the year kind of thing.”
“I bet she’s a big-titted thing. You know Tommy. At least when he is drunk his sight seems to only scan from shoulder to waist. Like his neck’s got a hitch or something. He’s an ugly motherfucker. I bet her tits look like a million dollars and her face like a bag of dogshit.”
I order another boilermaker and things are starting to get a bit swirly. I can’t believe he is doing this shit to me. The college girls are starting to arrive and all of the pool tables are filled up. There’s one with red hair that I swear keeps looking my way. She’s okay… a little like Sissy Spacek but with a better figure.
I go lay 50 cents down on the table just to be near her. See what she will do. I know this game. Shit! I know it better than anyone. Since Marla left me a year ago, I play it all the time. College girls, late at night at the bar, me dressed like a desk job. They think of the future. Plan on babies. Imagine fathers, houses, station wagons and swimming pools. -
A city in the rain
A birdhouse in the city rain At times, there’s no sadder place than a city in the rain.
I awoke this morning to a clap of thunder right as my alarm clock was going off at 6:45 AM. G was walking naked through the room, looking for clothes. It seemed as if it were much earlier. The light in the room was all off. I did my morning ritual of Diet Coke and a cigarette , then a shower – all the time worrying that the lightning would come in through the pipes and electrocute me. I wondered what that would feel like. Would my heart stop? If it didn’t start back, who would call the paramedics? I survived only to field a call from an insurance adjuster who needed to take a picture of my car for a claim I recently made.
The usual 10 minute drive to work took 30 as Dekalb Avenue was a river due to the stopped up drains and the overdevelopment of land alongside the road.
The office windows in my building are tinted, subtracting two hours from morning light and adding two hours to afternoon. It felt as if it were dusk all day. And then finally, I left. -
Chapter One
Tommy’s out tonight with this big-eyed girl and I can’t feel my left foot. We had agreed to meet here to do the usual. Play a couple of rounds of pool, drink some beers and shots, wait for the college girls to come in late, stare at the crowd. I had even got us our normal catbird seats in the crook of the bar from which the whole of the place could be scanned with just the movement of the eyes. We were set, and then he text messaged me telling me he’s gonna be late, maybe and hour or two.
So I start into it. I start with the the nightly innaugural boilermaker, then a dry martini. Get me there quick. You can’t stand to be in places like this sober. There’s no girls, nobody at all really except the couple of old geezers who always take the booth by the door and spend most of the night just staring at each other. Curtis, the bartender, asks where Tommy is and I tell him that he is out on a date.
“That ugly fucker,” he says.
“I know what you mean, man, but Tommy’s got the mad talking skills, and it doesn’t hurt that he works at the furniture store. You know how women get around home furnishings.”
I order another beer and a shot, then the second text message from Tommy comes.